


they tangle down and then take flight

by zenstrike



Series: you’re lucky that’s what i like [18]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Anxiety, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, KLANCE SHENANIGANS YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MANY KLANCE SHENANIGANS ARE IN YOUR FUTURE, M/M, POV Keith (Voltron), Romance, self-indulgent romantic garbage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-21 10:05:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16574408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenstrike/pseuds/zenstrike
Summary: Keith’s Ambiguous Familial Relation comes to visit.or, love is sometimes overwhelming.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> lmao i guess there’s no way i could finish this series in 50k words but ehhhhh lkdsfjaklfd
> 
> here’s part 1 of lance meets adam
> 
> thank you to colleen for reading the first chunk of this and letting me know if it’s crazy and you know it kind of is but i kind of love how this one is coming out????

Adam called one Sunday morning.

And it was the sort of Sunday morning where Keith woke up and frowned at the ceiling and listened to Lance singing a little song to Red that sounded mostly like it was about eggs.

And it was the sort of Sunday morning where Keith rolled over and there was Hunk, flat on his face and drooling onto a pillow.

And, most importantly, it was the kind of Sunday morning where Keith just had a bad feeling, where every fiber of what passed for his intuition was shrieking bloody murder despite the domestic softness that was his life. It was the kind of Sunday morning where Keith would _not_ have picked up the phone if Adam called.

Adam called Lance.

“I don’t know this number,” Lance said, tilting his head at his phone.

“Don’t answer it,” Hunk suggested, frowning at his textbook. Keith nodded his agreement and peered at Hunk’s page of formulas or some shit and then gagged. Hunk pulled his textbook away.

Keith went back to his anthology and wondered what the hell theory meant.

Lance—Lance, bless him; Lance, light of their lives; Lance, who must be protected at all costs—Lance said: “That’s not polite, guys.”

“I don’t like talking to strangers,” Keith said.

“I don’t like answering the phone,” Hunk muttered.

All of them knew this. Red probably knew this. When Hunk needed them, he called first.

“I’m going to answer the phone. Like a grown up,” Lance said, and got up from the table and wandered towards the sloped arch of what passed for a door to their kitchen-dining-room-study-box.

“Dangerous,” Hunk whispered.

Keith snorted and picked up his highlighter and listened to Lance say: “Hello?” And then a pause. And then Lance again: “Huh?”

Keith put his highlighter back down. Hunk muttered something at his textbook, hunched over it. And Lance turned, slowly, to look at Keith.

“Uh,” Lance said, lowering his phone. “It’s Adam.”

“Christ,” Keith said.

 

***

 

When Keith was nine-years-old, he met a tall man with broad shoulders and a smile that reminded Keith of his father’s. The man was intimidating in his uniform, with his straight back and his dark eyes, but that smile—it made Keith want to trust him, and he resisted that instinct by slouching in his seat and causing a ruckus and somehow that made Shiro want to love him.

He learned, later, that when Shiro was seventeen he met Adam at a recruitment event at a university and Adam had snarked at Shiro and Shiro had decided that Adam would, one day, want to love him.

And, a little after Shiro told him this, Keith met Adam and that was how Shiro made the three of them into a family and maybe that was why Adam left when Shiro threatened to put that in jeopardy.

 

***

 

“Threatened.”

But that isn’t quite right.

But maybe it’s enough that that was what it felt like.

 

***

 

“How did you get this number?”

Adam scoffed. “If I could just count on you to pick up the—”

“Did Shiro give it to you?”

Down the hall, Lance was waving his hands at Keith in a gesture Keith didn’t understand and Hunk was peering over Lance’s head with a smile and a vaguely sweaty face that made Keith think Hunk thought something dire was happening. Keith shut the bedroom door and sat on the bed. Red poked her head out from her cave and blinked at him and then ducked back inside to go back to sleep.

“He may have,” Adam said lightly. “I may have taken it from his phone.”

“Great.”

“He’s powerless to stop me.”

“You could have just called me, instead of scaring my boyfriend.”

“Ah, but Keith,” Adam said. “I am sorely lacking in opportunities to scare your boyfriend. Also, I know how you get. You wouldn’t have answered the phone.”

“Why are you like this?”

“Childhood trauma,” Adam replied easily and Keith thought about hanging up and then Adam continued: “I’m coming to visit.”

Keith blinked. He opened his mouth. He closed it.

“I said: I’m coming to visit.”

“Yeah, I heard you.”

“I’m giving you time to not—panic.”

“I don’t panic!”

Adam made a soft, humming-like noise that reminded Keith of birds and sitting under the table to do his homework with Adam hunched next to him, saying: “I guess this is okay.”

“Is this about Thanksgiving?” Keith said, his mouth dry. “Because—”

“It’s not about Thanksgiving,” Adam cut in. “Though I’ll tell you—I’m kind of touched that you cancelled torturing Lance with Katie all because I wasn’t there.” Adam sniffed. “You’re so loving.”

“Christ,” Keith said. “Why are you like this? Really? Why?”

Adam laughed and Keith’s shoulders sagged and he was starting to smile, just a little.

“It’s not about Thanksgiving,” Adam said again. “It’s about—a few things.”

“A few things,” Keith echoed.

“A few things.” Adam sounded thoughtful, now, and distracted. Something stirred at the back of Keith’s mind and it felt a little hopeful, a little silly, and a lot like his nine-year-old self. “I’m flying out to Vancouver, so I thought I’d come visit.”

Keith frowned. “You can get a flight from there.”

“It’s cheaper to come your way.”

“It’s not.”

“Keith,” Adam said, and Keith sat up a little straighter and cursed himself. “I’m coming to meet your boyfriend.” Adam paused. “He sounds nice. Shiro says he’s twitchy.”

“He isn’t _twitchy_.”

 

***

 

(Thanksgiving.

Or, the lead up to it.   

Shiro’s voice on the phone, slightly crackled and with an exhausted edge.

Lance, sitting on the other end of the couch, cross-legged, with pens stuck in his hair and a post-it on his cheek. Looking at Keith.

Keith looked away. He drummed his fingers against his knee.

Lance crumpled up the post-it and threw it at him.

“He’s going home,” Shiro said, sounding soft and tired and a little exasperated. Keith thought about putting him on speakerphone just so he’d have both hands free to pull at his hair. Pull it out. Mail it to Shiro as an expression of severe dissatisfaction.

“He is home,” Keith said. Or, snapped.

“Keith,” Shiro said.

Keith scowled. “He doesn’t even like Lethbridge.”

“Keith,” Shiro said again. “This is a good thing. I don’t know why now or—anything. But I’m glad. And you should be too.” Shiro paused. “This is a _good_ thing.”

Childish, irritated, disappointed Keith wanted to say: “No it isn’t.”

But Keith looked back at Lance, who was pulling the pens from his hair and looking quiet and concerned, and mature, understanding, loving Keith replied: “Fine.”

“Still come. Still bring Lance, okay? Colleen and Sam—”

“Maybe next time,” Keith said. He thought he heard Shiro’s teeth click together as he closed his mouth. He thought he could imagine Shiro, sitting in his living room or leaning against the counter in his kitchen. He was having trouble imagining Adam not being there, Adam not nudging Shiro or making faces at him just to be a distraction.

“Whatever you want, kiddo,” Shiro said eventually, too light and too easy.

“I’ll talk to you later,” Keith said, his throat tight and dry, and hung up.

“Keith,” Lance said, prompting and slow, like Keith’s one syllable could fill up a room. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Keith replied. Lance shuffled towards him, leaving pens scattered in his wake. “Thanksgiving’s cancelled.”

“Okay,” Lance said and pulled Keith into his arms.

Keith sagged against him, holding tight, and pressed his face to Lance’s neck and took in a long breath. “You smell good,” he mumbled.

Lance laughed and didn’t let go.)

 

***

 

Instinctively, Keith turned to look for a calendar by the closed door—but that was at home, in Shiro’s bedroom, with the dogs or the mountains or whatever Shiro had picked that year and—coming back to the present, to his and Lance’s apartment, was jarring and disorienting and made his teeth ache.

“It’s kind of early for this, isn’t it?” he said.

“It’s a good sign,” Adam replied. “Even if I don’t take the offer, I’m getting a trip to Vancouver and a visit to you. I’m very popular, already. Highly valued.”

“Uh huh,” Keith said and dropped back against the bed to try and stop the room from spinning. “But why UBC?”

“Good program. Good school.”

”I guess,” Keith muttered, fully aware that he had no idea what he was talking about.

“We can talk about it more when I get there.”

Talk about it, Keith thought. Talk about what? He scratched idly at his neck and then propped himself up on one elbow and eyed the closed door.

“My flight’s Thursday afternoon,” Adam continued, and Keith saw his week slipping away—and then he saw Lance’s sleep sliding towards non-existent. “And I think I’ll spend Wednesday with you.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll warn Lance.”

“That’s rude.”

 

***

 

(Pidge called and rather than hello, she said: “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Keith, in the social sciences library’s sunny and too-warm foyer, sighed and dropped onto a bench. “Hi,” he said.

“Just come home,” Pidge continued. “Bring your boyfriend. Let Adam live his life. Bla bla bla.”

Bla bla bla, indeed, Keith thought.

“I’m going to stay here for Thanksgiving,” he replied and scratched at a spot on his jeans. “I need to study.”

Pidge heaved a sigh so loud it made Keith’s ears ring. “Look, I get it—“

“Do you.”

“Don’t be an ass. Just come home. Shiro misses you.” She paused. And then, as if through her teeth: “I miss you.”

“Do you think we’re wrong?” Keith blurted out and slapped his hand to his knee. “About them?”

Pidge was quiet for a moment. Keith heard his own heartbeat in his ears. “Maybe,” she said eventually. “I don’t know. But Adam’s going to kick your ass when Shiro tells him you’re not coming home.”

“Maybe,” Keith echoed.

He went home and Lance seemed unsurprised when he said he was going to see Shiro for Thanksgiving. Lance smiled, he kissed Keith’s cheek, he stole a granola bar from Keith’s pocket, and he said: “I’ll come next Thanksgiving.”

Keith loved him with a ferocity that threatened to melt his bones.)

 

***

 

When Keith hung up, Lance’s phone flashed to its lockscreen and his own face stared back at him. He was bundled up in a scarf, with snow dusting his hair and his cheeks slightly flushed, and he couldn’t see the bottom of his face but he knew he was smiling because there was a cheerful shine to his eyes that only showed up in the pictures Lance took of him. Keith, slouched and sitting still at the edge of their bed, stared at his own expression until Lance’s phone went to sleep. He stood up before he could see his own reflection.

Lance and Hunk were waiting in the hall, Lance with his fingers in his mouth and teeth on his nails and Hunk reaching to pull his hand from his face. (“Bad habit,” Hunk would scold and Lance would sigh.)

“What?” Lance said, slapping his hands to his sides before Hunk could grab him. “What’s going on?”

Keith blinked. He tapped his fingers against Lance’s phone and wondered if he should tell Lance, or wait a little. But: “Adam’s coming,” he said.

“Now?” Lance squawked.

“Oh boy,” Hunk muttered and ducked back into the kitchen.

“On Wednesday.” Keith drummed his fingers some more. “He’s going to Vancouver, apparently.”

He pushed the phone into Lance’s waiting hands and ignored the way Lance eyed him, like Lance knew something was up or off—but how could he know that if Keith himself didn’t know what was going on?

“Adam’s just weird,” he muttered and wandered back into the kitchen.

“It’ll probably be nice to see him,” Hunk said cheerfully as Keith dropped back into his seat. “He’s your—” He broke off.

“Ambiguous familial relationship,” Lance mumbled, squinting at his phone.

“He’s Adam,” Keith corrected.

Lance made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a scoff and dragged a seat close to Keith. He dropped into it with a flail and a thump that made the table shake and Hunk glare. “Adam’s coming Wednesday, Adam’s leaving Thursday—”

“And Adam’s coming back on Sunday.” Keith rolled his highlighter against the open pages of his anthology. “He’s asked us to look after his car for the weekend.”

“Okay,” Lance said.

Hunk said a series of numbers that sounded like nonsense to Keith.

“Okay,” Lance said again.

Keith had a sudden feeling of déjà vu.

Hunk looked up.

“Okay,” Lance said one more time, grimacing and tapping his chin.

“Adam’s coming,” Keith repeated. “And it’s going to be fine.”

“Yeah. Fine.” Lance’s tapping became faster. “Totally fine.”

“Are you freaking out?” Hunk asked.

“He’s not,” Keith muttered. “He’s fine. Everything’s fine.”

“I need to clean,” Lance said and got up so quickly he knocked his chair over.

 

***

 

SHIRO: yes he told me

SHIRO: tell lance not to worry

SHIRO: and i’ll tell adam to be nice

 

***

 

Keith didn’t think Shiro telling Adam to “be nice” was going to do much for any of them.

 

***

 

Sunday night as a capital-n Night.

Lance was having trouble sleeping. That was normal. He had given up caffeine, briefly, but nothing had changed except that he dozed off during class.

Keith was having trouble sleeping. That was less normal. It irked Keith that Lance knew he was going to be restless, so Keith had gone to bed early, declaring loudly that he was going to get a good night’s rest—the better to tackle the week with. Hunk eyed them both. Maybe took some notes. And left.

“Keith,” Lance started.

“Good night,” Keith said and pulled the duvet over his head.

“Are _you_ nervous?”

“I’m never nervous.”

“You’re nervous.” Lance pulled the duvet away and Keith let him. Lance blinked down at him. “Why are you nervous?”

“I’m not,” Keith muttered, propping himself up on his elbows. He pulled the duvet from Lance’s hands but let it drop between them, heavy on his legs and bunched around his hips and under Lance’s knees. “I’m fine. I’m going to sleep.”

“Right.” Lance’s mouth twitched. “Are you nervous about me meeting Adam?”

“No.” Keith dropped back against the bed and rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “I want you to meet Adam.”

“Okay.” Lance pulled Keith’s hands away from his face and twisted their fingers together. “Then what?”

Keith was momentarily struck by the shape of their hands together, the press of Lance’s fingers against the back of his hands. He squeezed, and Lance squeezed back, and Keith smiled—just small and just briefly, but a smile all the same. Some of the exhausting weight (the quivering anxiety) lifted from his chest and his next breath felt cool and filling and a lot like holding Lance while he slept.

“Keith?” Lance waved their hands. “Hello hello, are you still alive?”

“Mostly,” Keith replied and Lance rolled his eyes. “I think there’s something going on.”

“What do you mean?”

“With Adam and Shiro.”

Lance tilted his head, glanced away and up and then back at Keith. “Okay,” he said eventually, slowly, dragging it out. “You’ve said that a few times.”

And Keith’s mouth went dry. “Something else,” he said, and it felt as bad as a confession. Like he had just admitted something shocking, or awful, or annoying. He swallowed. He scowled.

“Is this about Thanksgiving?”

“No.” He paused. “Maybe.”

Lance was quiet for a moment, then he untangled their hands and squirmed down next to Keith, slinging a leg over one of Keith’s and pressing his face against Keith’s neck with a tickling huff of breath. They fit together easily. They knew how to shift for each other, make room for each other, and Keith thought that _this_ was what natural felt like: his arms around Lance and Lance breathing against him and the world finally—finally—righting itself.

He deflated.

And Lance laughed, short and hot and making Keith roll his eyes.

The lights in the bedroom were still on and everything seemed very bright, with the dark outside their window and the hallway dim beyond their open door. Keith could feel sleep tugging at him anyways, or a comfy sort of drowsiness that he thought came with feeling safe with Lance. He heard Red clamber onto her wheel and start her nightly jog: squeak squeak squeak. Stop. And then again: squeak squeak squeak.

“I’m surprised she can still move,” Keith mumbled and took in a deep whiff of Lance’s hair. Lance had switched to a new shampoo: something vaguely floral, now, and not as Lance-like as his last brand—but underneath was a distinctly Lance smell and it was relaxing and peaceful to be close.

Lance knew this. Lance was sneaky like that.

“Don’t insult my daughter,” Lance sniffed and rubbed his nose into Keith’s neck until Keith was squirming again.

“She’s fat.”

“Let her be fat!”

“She needs to go on a diet.”

“Leave her alone.”

Keith hummed and pushed at Lance until they rolled to their sides, limbs tangled and Keith’s left arm stuck uncomfortably under Lance. They blinked at each other.

“Just because he’s visiting doesn’t mean he’s leaving,” Lance said eventually.

“Maybe,” Keith allowed. Something sharp tightened around his heart and made his lungs heavy and achey, just for a moment. He pushed it away. “I left, too.”

“You didn’t leave,” Lance said and brushed at something on Keith’s cheek. “You’re three hours away. You’re here for school.”

“If he goes to Vancouver, he’ll be an hour flight away,” Keith mumbled. His hands twitched. “He’ll be going for school, too. He’s living his life.”

Lance didn’t reply. He just kept looking at Keith, with his slow blinks and his lovely eyes, and Keith wondered what they were both waiting for. His stomach churned: impatience, irritation, maybe a little anxiety. Keith thought: this wasn’t how he wanted Lance to meet Adam. Keith thought: he had wanted Shiro there, as a buffer yes but also—

“It’s okay to miss him,” Lance said. “And it’s okay to worry about missing him more. He’s your family.”

A piece of it.

“Yeah,” Keith said. “I’ve known them apart longer than I knew them together. I just keep waiting—” He broke off with a grimace. He wanted to roll away, or pull away, or go for a walk, but Lance had him pinned with his eyes and his arms and his listening ears. Lance, who so handsome and so good, who brightened up a room just by stepping into it, who made everything else seem fuzzy and muted when he wasn’t within arms’ reach. Keith was still waiting for— _this_ to calm down but then he’d come home and Lance would smile at him and Keith would think: look at me, look only at me.

“You keep waiting for them to get back together,” Lance said, and Keith dropped back to reality with a thud and crash and maybe a little bit of a scream.

His ears popped. “Yeah.” He swallowed. “Do you ever—” He broke off again, his throat tight and something like embarrassment making his skin tingle. Adam and Shiro weren’t his parents, weren’t—

“I don’t,” Lance replied easily, because that’s what he did: filled gaps. He seemed to consider his next words, and then: “When my parents split up it was because they knew they’d be happier apart. At least, that’s what my dad says. And I was just a kid, you know? I already knew Isabel. My mom and dad seemed happy. Our lives changed and we didn’t stop being a family. We just became a different sort of family. You know?”

Keith wasn’t sure he did.

“But for the others— It was hard on Luis. I remember that. And Rachel and Veronica, and probably Marco, but Luis and Isabel still don’t have a great relationship because he just didn’t understand what was happening, I think.” Lance paused. He frowned. “To him it was maybe like we’d all lost something really important. Or, like my parents loving each other different invalidated something? Nobody knew what our family was going to look like, at the beginning, and Luis was already really protective of the rest of us. Anyways. I just wonder if I was a little older, or if I understood a little better—maybe I’d have been confused and upset, too.”

Confused and upset.

Was that was Keith was? Had he been confused and upset since he was a kid, watching Adam pack up and leave? But Adam had never gone very far. Adam was always there, just a phone call or a quick drive away. Adam was always in Shiro’s kitchen, and Shiro was always on Adam’s couch, and they talked and they laughed and the three of them did things together. Did everything together. Were a family together.

“Keith,” Lance said, his fingers against Keith’s cheek again. “It’s okay.”

Keith blinked at him. He wanted to melt into Lance, feel Lance’s arms around him and Lance’s voice in his ears.

“What about Shiro?” he said.

And Lance blinked at him and shuffled closer to kiss him softly and nudge his nose against Keith’s, and it was like he understood what Keith was saying even though Keith himself didn’t. “Let’s go to bed,” Lance said, almost whispered.

“We are in bed.”

“Why are you like this?”

Lance rolled away and got up and Keith listened to him shuffled about the their apartment. He listened to Lance change, Lance brush his teeth, Lance get a drink of something in the kitchen. He listened to Lance say good night to Red and he listened to Lance turn off the light and he listened to Lance settled back in next to him.

Keith stared at the ceiling, blinking slow and regular, and let his thoughts buzz into nothing. And then Lance was next to him and pulling the duvet over them both and Keith felt the world start spinning again and he wondered, briefly, what he had been worried about.

Lance made a sound that was half-squawk and half-laugh when Keith clambered on top of him and peppered his face with kisses.

“You’re so weird,” Lance said, batting at Keith’s face half-heartedly. He laughed again when Keith kissed his palm and slumped back against the bed with an exaggerated sigh.

“I’m going to love you forever,” Keith said, his heart thrumming in his chest and his voice serious and heavy. “I’m going to love you until my bones melt. I’m going to love you until the universe collapses.” He paused. “I’m going to love you even when Red is skinny.”

“She’s a hamster! Leave her alone!”

The room was dark, now, and Keith could barely see the shape of Lance’s nose, his hair, his lips, but he thought he knew exactly how Lance looked right then, with his face warm and his eyes wide and his mouth doing his twitchy little thing that was so familiar to Keith.

He tried to remember what his life had been like before Lance. He tried to remember what it had been like before he could step close and kiss Lance whenever he wanted, before he had been able to take Lance’s hand when they walked to campus together, before late nights of pizza or slow kisses or hearing Lance hum to himself as he got ready for his day.

He tried to imagine a tomorrow where all that wasn’t his.

“I love you,” Lance said, quiet but firm, and pushed his hands through Keith’s hair.

“Big mood,” Keith mumbled and Lance laughed and pulled him down for a kiss, long and bruising and warm so it was hard to pull away.

So he didn’t.

And when Lance dug his fingers into his shoulders, Keith thought: I love you.

And when Lance whispered his name into his ear, Keith thought: I love you.

And the taste of Lance’s skin and the way Lance’s pulse thrummed in his neck made Keith think that this was his forever, and he would fight for them and every future version of them every day of his life.

“I love you,” Lance said again, and one or both of them was trembling. “I mean it— I love you.”

And he took Keith’s breath away.

Everything felt narrowed, like they were back in their dorm and hiding their voices on one of the narrow, too-small beds. Except that this was their bed, and their sheets, and their home.

They didn’t need an excuse to press close to each other, maybe.

Keith tried to stay awake. He was suddenly sure that he needed to keep an eye on Lance, to make sure he slept through the night, to make sure he calmed his racing brain enough to rest. But sleep tugged at Keith and Lance traced comforting shapes against his arm and Keith pressed tired kisses to the back of his neck and Lance told half-whispered and half-finished stories.

His alarm woke him too early.

Mondays meant morning practice and morning Lit and Religion lectures. Mondays meant dragging himself away from Lance, who was so warm and affectionate when he was half-asleep and cursing Keith’s alarm.

Keith rolled from their bed and said some unpleasant things to his phone. Red made a couple of squeaky sounds at him, probably in protest of Life, and squirmed her way back into her cage.

“Good morning to you, too,” Keith said, squinting down at her butt as she disappeared.

Lance snorted from the bed.

“I’m going to turn on the light for a minute,” Keith said, rubbing his eyes.

“‘kay.”

He flicked on the bedroom light and cursed the brightness and turned in time to watch Lance sit up, blinking blearily and smile crookedly at Keith. He watched Lance yawn and rub at a spot below his collar bone and blink, blink, blink the sleep from his eyes. Lance looked suddenly older, to Keith: all broad shoulders and wild hair and not entirely like the gangly boy Keith had met the year before. Lance, still smiling, tilted his head and said: “What?”

“You look good.”

Lance blinked. His mouth twitched. Keith smiled, and Lance flushed and fell back against the bed, slapping his hands to his face.

“I know!” He pointed at the ceiling with enough aggression to make Keith laugh. “You don’t have to say it.”

“Uh huh,” Keith said.

“Ugh! Why am I like this!” Lance’s arm dropped back to the bed. “Why are _you_ like this?”

“Good morning to you, too,” Keith said and went back to the bed to give Lance a quick kiss, which was just enough to make them both smile.

 

***

 

We all want to think love lasts forever.

 

***

 

SHIRO: i talked to adam

SHIRO: he said “i’m always nice”

 

***

 

Adam was not always nice.

Shiro told Keith a story, once, about the time he and Adam were walking in the arts district and came across a preacher (“On a literal box. Like he came out of a satirical comedy sketch or something.”) who was yelling the Lord’s word (“Homosexuals and muslims and liberals,” Shiro had sighed. “The usual.”). Adam had, apparently, stopped in his tracks and cleaned his glasses (“Always a bad sign.”) and clambered up on the box and started—

(“Mooing,” Shiro had sighed. “Like a cow. Mooing.”)

Keith still thought this was a funny story.

He was pretty sure Shiro thought so, too, and he was pretty sure that that was the day Shiro had decided he was going to marry Adam.

The preacher, such as he was, had apparently fallen off the box and cursed Adam repeatedly and then packed up his things. Adam had refused to get off the box and had brought it home with them.

 

***

 

There was also the time when Keith had gotten into a fight at school and Adam had gotten there first, somehow, and stormed into the school.

And the secretary, bless her tired heart, had said: “Mr. Whalen, I’m sorry but you _know_ —“

Adam had slapped a copy of his guardianship papers on the desk and, in the overexcited way only Adam could muster, had said: “It’s official now, bitches.”

And Keith had been horrified.

And the poor secretary had been horrified.

And Adam had said: “Oh my god. I’m so sorry.”

But he had still stormed the rest of the way into the principal’s office and interrupted the meeting with the other kid’s parents and said (maybe shouted): “I’m taking Keith home.”

And Shiro had met them at Adam’s apartment, pale and confused and a little more than angry and the shouting match that had ensued was both epic and entertaining and caused enough of a distraction for Keith to order pizza without Shiro or Adam noticing until they had eaten three slices each. Even at twelve, Keith had the feeling that they weren’t really yelling at each other so much as venting at each other, and this was confirmed when they both fell asleep on the couch and didn’t stop Keith from watching action movies all night.

 

***

 

And the next year when Keith started at a new school where none of the kids knew a thing about him, Adam said: “How about a sport, huh? How about—I don’t know—kung fu or something. Want to learn to fight people?”

“Jesus christ, Adam,” Shiro had muttered.

“What?”

“Volleyball,” Keith had interrupted, waving a flyer he’d snatched off the bulletin board at school. “Tryouts are this Friday.”

Shiro and Adam had stared at him.

“Well, okay,” Shiro had said. “I didn’t know you like volleyball.”

“Be honest, Keith,” Adam had said. “Do you want to try out for volleyball because someone said you were too short to play?”

Keith had just waved the flyer some more and that had been that.

 

***

 

Lance spent Monday freaking out about the state of their apartment (“I don’t see anything wrong with it,” Keith had muttered to Hunk and Hunk had just hushed him).

Lance spent Tuesday chewing his fingers.

But Lance woke up Wednesday strangely peaceful.

“I feel good,” he said to Keith when they met for mid-morning coffee. “I’m going to charm Adam’s socks off.”

“Why do I find that touching?” Keith muttered to his coffee.

Lance retaliated by eating half his donut. (Keith would have shared anyways.)

“The apartment is spotless,” Lance said and licked frosting from his fingertips. “ _I’m_ spotless. It’s going to be fine.”

Keith looked back at his coffee, concentrating very hard on the shape of the lid and wondering if Lance was doing _that_ on purpose or if this was just another instant of Keith being so horribly gone for Lance—

“Eli!”

Keith looked up at the same time that Lance stood up, waving both arms.

Across the bustling hallway of the math building (a good in-between point between the biological sciences building and the social sciences library; neither of them had to go outside and there was coffee, food, and seating) was Eli, with his big eyes and his freckles and the smile he liked to shine right at Lance.

A voice that sounded like a mix of Shiro and Hunk told Keith to be nice and to not be crazy.

He sipped his coffee.

Eli made his way towards them and Lance immediately pulled him into a tight hug that left Eli—slightly flushed.

“Hi guys,” he said.

“Hi Eli,” Keith said.

Lance pulled Eli into the seat next to him. “I haven’t seen you in ages.”

“I guess not,” Eli said, a little sheepish and _slightly flushed_.

Keith sipped his coffee some more.

“How’re classes?”

“They’re good, I think. No more physics!” A laugh.

Haha, Keith thought. And then immediately wanted to punch himself in the face.

But was it so unreasonable to be annoyed that someone else was infringing on their time? On the time _they_ set aside, just for this and just for them?

He finished his coffee.

The Shiro-Hunk voice said: yes, yes it was.

“How are you, Keith?” Eli asked, and then Lance turned _his_ stupid-bright smile on Keith and Keith melted a little and some of his irritation (his jealousy, muttered the Shiro-Hunk voice) faded.

“Good,” Keith said. He paused. He put his emptied cup back down on the table. “It’s nice to see you, Eli.”

The Shiro-Hunk voice praised him, a little generously.

Eli and Lance, on the other side of the rickety table, launched into a conversation Keith only half-listened to. Eli spent a lot of time smiling and nodding and tapping his hands against the table when Lance said something funny. Lance was animated, all wild hand gestures and big smiles and bright light in his eyes. This was the Lance that Keith loved the most, the Lance who was eager to hear and be heard, to fill up a room or lighten the mood at a table. Lance, who wrote silly notes to his friends and to Keith, and who never hesitated to take Keith’s hand and tug him towards something interesting (a rabbit, a funny-shaped tree, someone they both knew even if Keith had forgotten).

Keith finished the donut. He watched them for a moment more, and then he wondered: what will Adam think? Not _what will Adam think of Lance_ but more _what will Adam think of them_? He waited for anxiety to flutter in his belly but nothing came except something a little like curiosity.

He wasn’t worried.

“I’m going to get going,” he said, and Eli and Lance looked at him, both still smiling. Keith shoved the lid into his coffee cup and bundled up the donut’s wrapper with a crunch.

“I’ll see you later,” Lance said as Keith stood and Keith had another one of those startling moments of Lance-induced clarity, with him half-standing with his hands balanced against the table and Lance looking up at him with his bright eyes and his wide smile and it was like—

Well, it was like the whole world stopped for them, and why had he ever been both bothered by Eli the Ex-Lab Partner?

“I don’t know when Adam is getting here, so just...be ready.”

“I’m ready. I’m so ready. I’m always ready.”

Keith shook his head but leaned over the table and Lance met him halfway for a kiss that was more of a peck but it left them both smiling. Eli waved as Keith left, and then he and Lance bowed their heads together and went back to talking about _whatever_ and Keith managed not to think about the sheer focus Eli the Ex-Lab Partner gave Lance.

 

***

 

“Do you ever get tired of each other?” Mike Donoghue had asked Keith once.

No, they did not.

At least, Keith didn’t get tired of Lance. And Lance had yet to say: “I’m sick of you, Keith.”

Keith was waiting for this thing between them, this thing fuelling their relationship, to plateau, to become simple and calm and a little less all-consuming. What would he do, if they hit that? Would the world open up and he’d see people other than Lance? Would Lance see people other than him?

For now, it didn’t matter.

Things between them just kept escalating.

Up, and up, and up.

 

***

 

THE BOY: When are you getting here?

THE BOY: Hello?

 

2 Missed Calls from THE BOY

 

***

 

(“I’m _what_ in your phone?”

“Don’t like it? How about—my boy?”

“That’s so weird. That’s— _so weird_.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“Shiro, tell him that’s weird.”

“Don’t look at me, Keith. I can’t control him.”)

 

***

 

The day Shiro learned about the project, the day Sam told him about the project, he picked up Keith from school and they walked home together. And Keith knew something was wrong.

Or up. Something was up.

“Keith,” Shiro had said eventually. “There’s something I have to do. I don’t think Adam’s going to like it.”

“Okay?” Keith had blinked up at him and Shiro had smiled.

And Adam had not liked it. Not one bit.

“It’s important,” Shiro had snapped. “And it’s important to me.”

“And me, Takashi? And Keith? How important are we?”

 

***

 

(“And what are you going to do, Keith? Pout until I change my mind?”

“I don’t pout.”

“What you’re doing right now is called pouting.”

“I don’t pout.”

“Go home,” Adam said. “Spend Thanksgiving with your brother. I’ll see you at Christmas.”

“I wanted to bring Lance,” Keith snapped.

“Then bring Lance.”

Keith hung up.)

 

***

 

Keith got home first and found a pair of shoes he half-recognized by their front door. He could smell pizza. He shoved his keys back into his jacket pocket and dropped his backpack to the floor and took several deep breaths.

“Adam?” he called.

Adam poked his head out of the kitchen. “I ordered pizza.”

“I can smell that.”

Adam ducked back into the kitchen.

Keith took his time taking off his shoes and coat. He sent a message to Lance, announcing pizza first and Adam second. He nudged Adam’s shoes.

Adam was nosing around their cupboards when Keith finally stepped into the kitchen.

“You’re kind of organized,” Adam said without turning around. “I’m kind of impressed.”

“Lance is kind of organized,” Keith corrected. He opened one of the pizza boxes. “Mushrooms.”

“Mushrooms.” Adam whirled around and snatched a slice from the box, as though for emphasis. “So many mushrooms.”

Keith closed the box. Adam took an enormous bite of his mushroom-mushroom-mushroom pizza.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re weird?”

Adam shrugged and nudged Keith with his elbow. It kind of passed for a greeting.

Keith opened the other box. More cheese. Pepperoni. Untouched. More mushrooms. He grabbed a slice and watched the cheese ooze. “I texted you.”

“I turned off my phone,” Adam said, continuing his snooping with his slice of pizza clutched in one hand.

“What? Why?”

“I needed to do some thinking.” Adam crouched, peering under their sink.

Keith sat at the table and watched him, eating his own slice idly. “What are you looking for?”

“Evidence.”

“Of what?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Keith squinted at him and wondered if he should call Shiro and ask him if Adam was broken. Ask him if he knew where Adam’s off-switch was. And then it clicked.

“You’re nervous,” Keith blurted.

Adam shut the cupboard and stood, his back to Keith. He took another enormous bite of his pizza. “Nope,” he said eventually.

“You’re nervous about meeting Lance.”

“Nope.”

Keith nibbled at his pizza and smiled at Adam’s back.

“Stop that,” Adam said.

Keith smiled some more and they finished their pizza and Keith, because he was feeling kind and generous, did not mention that half of the mushroom-mushroom-mushroom pizza was already gone.

When his slice was finished, Adam whirled around and joined Keith at the table, sitting slumped with his arms crossed and his eyes focused on Keith. “So,” he started. “This is where you live.”

“This is where I live.” Keith paused. “What were you going to do if Lance got home first?”

“I don’t know,” Adam said with a sigh. “Frighten him, I guess.”

Keith shoved the rest of his pizza into his mouth.

 

***

 

LANCE: WHAT

LANCE: WHAT

LANCE: WHAAAAAT

 

***

 

“Keith,” Adam said and Keith looked up from his phone, though it continued to _bzzt bzzt_ in his hand as Lance sent him panicked gibberish.

Adam didn’t continue. His mouth twisted. He slumped some more in his seat. He eyed Keith with a severity that was both alien and bizarrely familiar.

“What?”

“I need to talk to you about Vancouver.”

Keith blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Not just Vancouver, really.” Adam paused. He pulled off his glasses and cleaned them with the hem of his shirt and Keith wanted to tell him not do that delay-the-inevitable thing he loved to do, but Keith’s mouth had gone dry and he was started to feel that panic—that fear—in his belly again that he didn’t know how to deal with.

“Adam,” he started. “Are you—”

And then the door burst open and Lance shouted: “I’m not late!”

 

***

 

TAKASHI: he’ll understand if you just tell him. he’s an adult. he’s a reasonable kid.

TAKASHI: yeah i see what i wrote just keep driving

TAKASHI: you hooligan

 

***

 

Adam met Lance and Lance met Adam and nothing happened really.

Lance, admittedly, twitched a bit.

Adam shook his hand.

He said, “Hi. I’m Adam.”

And Keith waited for something weird to follow but that was—it. Adam even—smiled. Keith saw Shiro’s influence, blossoming like a beautiful flower or something.

“I’m Lance,” Lance replied, a little late maybe but the words made their way out. “Nice to meet you!”

“I broke into your apartment and filled it with pizza,” Adam said and yeah, there it was. “I’m going to sleep on your couch. I’ll try not to drool.”

“Two pizza boxes does not an apartment fill,” Keith muttered and pulled their hands apart with an intense feeling of deja vu.

“Okay,” Lance said.

Keith loved him. A lot.

“He didn’t actually break in,” Keith said. “He took Shiro’s key.”

“Excuse you: he gave me his key.”

“That worked out,” Lance said, and Keith sighed and went to get his sweating boyfriend a slice of pizza.

“Don’t worry,” Adam continued when Keith’s back was turned. “I ordered a pizza with a dead animal on it just for you guys.”

“Thanks,” Lance choked out.

And when Keith came back and saw Adam’s face he figured that Lance had passed whatever weird Adam-test he had been subjected to.

And when Adam insisted on greeting his granddaughter and Lance said “Oh, I’ll go get her,” Keith had a feeling that Adam had somehow passed a weird Lance-test.

Adam followed Lance to their bedroom and Lance squawked when he realized Adam was behind him and Keith ate two more slices of pizza.

 

***

 

HUNK: how goes meeting the ambiguous familial relationship

HUNK: Has Lance thrown up?

HUNK: Have you thrown up?

HUNK: you know, my phone autocorrects to “keith” any time i press the k key and that should be a sign of our lasting friendship

HUNK: the magic of technology tells me that you are reading my messages and choosing not to respond and i find that very upsetting

HUNK: Keith come on give me an update I’m dying

HUNK: Keith my dude my man my main guy (don’t tell lance) is it going well or is it going really really bad

HUNK: I no longer love you

HUNK: That was a joke I’ll always love you man

 

***

 

“Tell me about yourself, Lance.”

“I’m...nineteen. I like blue. I eat pizza more than I should.”

“Go on.”

“I really like rodents?”

“Hence the hamster.”

“That’s a funny story, actually—”

 

***

 

HUNK: he’s telling what story

HUNK: THAT’S how you guys got red? He LITERALLY rescued her?

HUNK: The world is dark and full of terrors, Keith

HUNK: okay i see you are back to not answering thanks man is it the pop culture reference or is it that lance is projectile vomiting from stress

 

***

 

Adam wrestled the coffee machine away from Keith and Lance suggested they all share a pot of tea.

“You have a lot of tea,” Adam observed, peering over Lance’s shoulder.

“It’s not all ours,” Lance replied, poking at different cans as he read the labels. “My best friend keeps a bunch of stuff here. A lot of this is his.”

“Most of it’s his,” Keith said from the table, content to watch them.

“I think all of it might be his.” Lance pulled a container from the shelf and turned around, waving it towards Keith. Adam ducked out of the way just in time. “Do you recognize this?”

“Oh, yeah. Hunk made that the other day. It smells like fruit but tastes like flowers.”

“Specific,” Adam observed.

Keith shrugged. He slumped back in the chair and watched Lance pull a teapot he didn’t recognize (it was probably Hunk’s) from the shelf. “It’ll do,” Lance said, shaking the container thoughtfully. He looked at Adam. Adam looked at him.

It was all very strange.

Surreal, even.

Here was Adam, actually standing in their kitchen, in front of Lance. Keith had a sudden, new appreciation for the phrase: “worlds colliding.” Maybe he was even waiting for a black hole to open up and swallow up all of them.

“Uh,” Lance said. “I can probably do it by myself.”

“I can help,” Keith said.

“Stand up and I’ll throw the coffee maker out the window.”

Keith thought Lance’s suspicions were unwarranted.

“One time,” Lance said to Adam, who hadn’t moved. “Keith started making coffee in his sleep.”

Adam opened his mouth.

“I did not!” Keith interrupted, scowling.

Adam closed his mouth.

“I was awake!”

“Your eyes were closed.”

“I was tired.”

“I think it’s instinctual for you,” Lance said, starting their shiny electric kettle (a self-interested Christmas present from Hunk). It beeped at him. Lance gave it a pat. “I think your body is naturally drawn towards the nearest source of coffee—not caffeine, literally coffee. Never work in a coffee shop, cupcake.”

“He did work in a coffee shop,” Adam piped up then, because of course he would. “He spent—almost a year working at a Starbucks.”

“Why are you here again?” Keith snapped.

Adam and Lance ignored him.

“He did?” Lance said, grinning as he dumped tea leaves unceremoniously into the pot.

“He did.”

“Is that where the coffee problems started?”

“That’s _his_ fault.” Keith gestured, a little wildly, at Adam.

Adam and Lance ignored him some more.

“Maybe,” Adam said, tapping his chin with a vague air of superiority that made Keith want to call Shiro. “The coffee may have been the reason he stuck around as long as he did. Customer service doesn’t come naturally to our Keith.”

“Keith in a green apron,” Lance sighed. “I’m going to be thinking about that for a while.”

“I think all the coffee’s why he’s so short.”

“I’m taller than Lance!”

Lance whirled around and pointed at Keith with the cream-coloured lid of the teapot. “Don’t tell lies,” he said, so seriously Keith was momentarily convinced he _had_ told a lie.

“You two are very strange,” Adam said.

And wasn’t he one to talk.

 

***

 

HUNK: i like that tea

 

***

 

It was weird and—not weird, how quickly Lance and Adam seemed to get each other.

Maybe it was that Lance was just too good. Maybe he counteracted Adam’s natural Weird in ways Keith hadn’t expected. Maybe it was just fate, or destiny, or true love, or whatever.

In any case, Adam fell asleep on the couch and Keith pulled off his glasses for him and Lance drank the rest of Hunk’s tea. He turned to Keith fruit on his breath and flowers on his tongue and said: “He’s nice, your ambiguous familial relation.”

“Stop calling him that,” Keith muttered, setting Adam’s glasses on their makeshift coffee table (wobbly, it had probably once been a shelf). “He’s just Adam.”

Lance kissed him and Keith sighed and washed the teapot.

It was strange to tiptoe around their apartment together, Lance muffling his laughter and Keith suddenly self-conscious about taking his hand or touching his cheek. But something about it made Keith think of the future, or future versions of them in future versions of their home, accommodating the people they both loved. It made Keith want to run his hands over Lance’s shoulders and taste his spine and listen to him sleep.

But he also wanted to savour Adam, asleep on their couch and snoring in the Adam-way he did. Lance had watched Keith take Adam’s glasses, watched him fold them and set them aside and toss a blanket over Adam. And Keith had turned to him and Lance had just smiled.

They went to bed.

“I’m glad I got to meet him,” Lance said, shuffling close and kissing Keith’s shoulder.

“Me too,” Keith yawned.

“Did you get a chance to talk?”

Keith blinked. “What do you mean?” He rolled over and slung an arm over Lance and felt Lance breathe out against his forehead.

“About the something that you think is up.”

“When you say it like that, you make me sound crazy.”

“I don’t know how else to say it,” Lance mumbled, nosing at the furrowed spot between Keith’s eyebrows. “There’s a thing. You think it is up. You haven’t talked to Adam about it.”

“Nope.” Keith paused, listening to Lance breathe and imagining he could count Lance’s heartbeats: one-two, three-four, five-six, straight on to infinity— “But I will.”

“Yeah?”

“He wants to talk about something, too, I think,” Keith continued. “I think—” He broke off and huffed in a hard breath.

“Vancouver’s not so far,” Lance said, soft and easy, like he knew what Keith was trying to say (and maybe he did). “We could visit him. Go whale watching.”

Keith snorted. Lance kissed his forehead, loud and wet, and laughed when Keith squirmed.

“Shiro could visit him, too. He’d still be close.”

Yeah.

(Shiro could—)

Keith knew all that, objectively. But then—Vancouver, and UBC, weren’t Adam’s only options. All Adam needed to do now was say it to Keith’s face: _I’m going away_.

“Go to sleep,” Lance said, settling with a sigh. “You can wake Adam up with a blow horn or something in the morning.”

“The neighbours would hate that.”

“Uh, so would Adam.”

Keith hummed and smiled and nosed against Lance’s neck and felt Lance sigh again, and felt some tension leak from his own body (maybe from his soul). “We don’t have a blow horn,” he said.

“You sound so disappointed.”

Keith grunted and relaxed into Lance and against their bed and he fell asleep, like diving off a cliff into warm water, with Lance’s fingers tapping against his arm and Lance’s breaths close by his ear.

 

***

 

(Listening in on Shiro and Adam.

How familiar.

Like he was always waiting for some lovestruck confession, the kind of thing that heightens the drama in his books or in Shiro’s movies—whispered and intense: _I’ve always loved you_ and _Keith is gonna say “I told you so.”_

Reality was sweeter, in its way. Frustrating.

At nine: “ _What about us? How much do we mean to you—How—”_

At seventeen: _“That’s far away_.”

Keith settled against the wall, hugging his knees and tilting his head as though that would help him hear better, hear more. The way his hair dragged against the paint, tacky and like home. He felt huge, and long, and out of place and right where he needed to be all at once—small and powerful and independent and lonely.

“He could have gone farther,” Shiro said. “Plenty of people go across the country for school.”

“Plenty of people stay home.”

“Did you know they have the largest research libraries outside of Toronto?” Shiro continued. “I didn’t.”

“Great. You came back from a tour with facts. Nice.”

“Just listen.”

“Fine. Fine!”

“The whole tour he was just so—obviously checked out. Full on bored-Keith.”

Adam laughed.

Keith scowled.

“The poor girl showing us around— Anyways—”

“You probably talked to her until she was uncomfortable.”

“She started the thing uncomfortable. Anyways—”

“Go on.”

“— _anyways_ , we get to the library, which is apparently the first of three on the list—”

“Remind me to _never_ go on a campus tour _anywhere_ , _ever_.”

“— _which is apparently the first of three on the list_ , and Keith perks up and goes ‘Books?’—”

“That’s my boy.”

“—and the poor girl says this thing about the research library and Keith goes ‘Yes, books’ and he thanks her and says he’s leaving the tour.”

“So he can go look at the books.”

“We spent an hour just wandering around. You should have been there.”

“I wanted to be there.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know. I _know_. I’m just—”

“It’s okay if he goes away—”

“Yeah, I know that too.”

Quiet.

Keith closed his eyes. He tilted away from the kitchen entrance, almost subconsciously.

“I’m sorry,” Adam said. “It’s good you were there. You’re his brother.”

“Adam,” Shiro started.

“I know it’s okay. It’s good, even. Scholarship. Library. Stuff.”

“Adam,” Shiro said again, pushing and prodding.

“I should go.”

“If you want.” A pause. “Call him tomorrow. Ask him about the library.”

Keith thought he could hear Adam smiling. He pulled himself to his feet and snuck back down the hall before they could catch him.)

 

***

 

When his alarm woke him, Lance grabbed at his shirt and tried to pull him back to the bed.

This was a sign.

“Did you sleep at all?” Keith muttered, prying Lance’s hand from his shirt and leaning down to peck at the back of Lance’s neck.

Lance squirmed. He rolled away and clutched a pillow to his chest and sighed, falling back asleep even as Keith’s alarm continued to beep from his phone.

Keith stumbled to it and perhaps pressed the STOP button with more aggression than was really appropriate, but the SNOOZE button was so tempting, and Lance was so warm and he smelt good _all the time_ and sometimes worry churned in Keith’s stomach, fanning a protective flame he didn’t always know how to douse.

He looked back at the bed. Lance snored, asleep now, at least.

Keith kissed him once more, and Lance sighed, and Red emerged to sniff around her food dish, and Keith carried on with his day because that was what one did.

When he closed the bedroom door and turned around, Adam was leaning out of the kitchen, his hair a mess and his glasses crooked.

They blinked at each other.

“Good morning,” Keith said.

Adam waved and ducked back into the kitchen and a moment later Keith smelled coffee. He smiled to himself and went to shower.

He dressed quickly, afraid that even the little light from his little lamp at his bedside would wake Lance. Every cell in his body was screaming for him to crawl back into bed and wrap himself around Lance and hold them both to the bed until the rest of the world disappeared, but Keith reminded himself _don’t be crazy_ and settled for leaning over Lance one more time and brushing his fingers through Lance’s hair and kissing behind his Lance’s ear.

“Have a good day,” Lance said sleepily. “Go kick some balls.”

“Not the right sport,” Keith replied with a smile. Lance just grunted at him and Keith left him be.

Adam was waiting for him in the kitchen, his arms folded and a Philip K. Dick paperback face down on the table. He looked a little tidier, like he’d woken up properly and fixed his glasses and his hair and maybe brushed his teeth. He looked right, even, sitting in Keith and Lance’s kitchen and looking at Keith with that Knowing look only Adam could level at him, that made him want to slink away before Adam said something Keith didn’t want to hear.

“I made coffee,” Adam said, and it made Keith miss Shiro suddenly, fiercely.

It was the full-body kind of missing. Like something aching and empty at his core, so close and so different to the way he missed Lance when they were apart. Maybe Keith daydreamed about having everyone he loved within reach. Maybe he had abandonment issues. Maybe he wanted to ask Adam: _do you feel this too_?

“Thanks,” he said and for whatever reason, that made Adam smile.

“I’m reading _Ubik_ ,” Adam said as Keith poured himself a cup of coffee. “I don’t think I like it.”

“Read something else,” Keith muttered and took a hesitant sip.

“I never leave a book half-finished,” Adam sniffed.

Keith rolled his eyes and joined Adam at the table, ready for this familiar almost-argument: _don’t waste your time on books you dislike_ and _you can’t judge it until you take in the whole_.

But then Adam said: “Your boyfriend doesn’t sleep much, does he.”

Not a question.

A casual, idle observation.

But it struck Keith like ice between his eyes and he suddenly couldn’t look at Adam. He frowned at his coffee. He tapped his fingers against the side of his mug (actually one of Lance’s favourites, with its pastel blue colour and comfortable handle). It was as if Adam had exposed a vicious failure that Keith didn’t want to admit to, but that was irrational and again came the reminder from the back of Keith’s mind: _don’t be crazy_.

“He’s sleeping right now,” Keith said eventually. And it was inadequate. And he knew it.

“I didn’t sleep too great last night, either,” Adam continued.

“I told you the couch was uncomfortable.”

“The couch is fine.” Keith looked up and Adam waved a hand dismissively. “I was dreaming.”

“Oh,” Keith said.

“Actually, I think I was remembering.”

“What?”

“Do you remember when you had the flu? That weekend Takashi was away? You ditched school and—”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.” Adam paused. “I was remembering watching you sleep after I took you to the hospital, and you kept shivering because of the fever, and I remember feeling like I couldn’t close my eyes or I’d miss something important.”

Something hard and tight balled up in Keith’s throat. He tried and failed to swallow it down. He tapped his fingers against the mug and thought of Lance, asleep in their bed, and he thought of Lance, holding him tight as he fell asleep.

“Anyways,” Adam sighed. “I woke up and I found your boyfriend in the kitchen and he’s just looking out the window and—” Another pause. “He looked very tall. I thought I was still dreaming. We talked for a while and I kept wondering what this seaside boy is doing out here on the prairies.”

“Destiny,” Keith muttered, and then was horrified and felt his face heat up.

Adam laughed. “You know what else I kept thinking?”

“No.”

Adam didn’t respond immediately and when Keith finally looked at him he felt something lurch in his stomach. He tried to swallow the thing his throat, tried to force it down and away, but Adam was looking at him with an expression Keith had only ever seen once and had thought, since he was nine-years-old, that he had dreamt it.

“He loves you,” Adam said.

Keith heard the tapping of his own fingers as if from far away. He felt his heart beating, but wasn’t certain, suddenly, that his blood was warm and his body his own.

(We all want to think that love lasts forever.)

“I want to take care of him,” Keith blurted. “I try—”

“I know,” Adam said and Keith snapped his mouth shut. “You’re taking care of each other. I bet it’s scary, sometimes.”

Yes, Keith thought.

“It’s a crazy thing, loving someone. You probably spend a lot of time just trying to spend time together.  Doing your best for each other. Making plans.”

“I guess,” Keith muttered. “Are you—”

“The thing about loving someone,” Adam barrelled on. “The thing—” And then he broke off, frowning at the table. “Takashi’s better at this part.”

“Maybe,” Keith allowed. He leaned back and wiped his sweaty palms against his pants. He said it again, just for good measure and maybe as discouragement: “Maybe.”

“Definitely,” Adam sighed and pulled off his glasses and cleaned them with the hem of his shirt and said: “Look, you love someone and you want to do everything you can for them. And at first ‘everything you can’ literally means—everything.” He slid his glasses back on and blinked twice at Keith.

“Okay,” Keith said when Adam kept looking at him, like he was waiting for something but Keith couldn’t figure out what. “Is this—is this about you and Shiro?”

Adam balked. “No.”

“Is this about me and Lance?”

“No.” A pause. “He seems like a sweet kid.”

Lance wasn’t a kid. Keith wasn’t a kid. They weren’t— _kids_.

“Then—”

“I love you, Keith,” Adam said, with a weight that made it feel less affectionate and more—well, Keith didn’t know what, but he reeled and he wavered and he felt the world start to slow beneath him. “It doesn’t matter where we are or how long it takes to get to each other or whatever it is we’re doing: I love you.”

“You’re leaving,” Keith said.

Adam blinked at him one more time and then nodded. “I’m leaving.”

“Vancouver’s not far. Vancouver’s—”

“I might not go to Vancouver.”

“So you might stay home.”

“No,” Adam said slowly. “I’m leaving, Keith. I need to leave. Maybe Vancouver. Maybe Toronto, I don’t know.”

Keith sucked in a breath, held it until it burned in his chest, and then let it back out in a sigh that was more of a huff, more exhaustion than relief. “Okay,” he said eventually. “You’re leaving.”

“I’m leaving.”

And he looked at Adam and Adam looked at him and, very slowly and very painfully, the thing in Keith’s throat crawled back up and began beating against his teeth.

“I have to go,” he said and stood.

“Keith—”

“I’ve got practice. I’ll come back at lunch.”

“I wanted to tell my mom about you,” Adam said as Keith stood. “She knew about you, really, but she didn’t— _know_. That’s why I went home at Thanksgiving.”

Keith, mouth dry, felt his heart stutter in his chest and all he managed was: “I’ll see you later.”

He left before he could think of Lance, alone in their kitchen, or Adam, alone at the table, or Shiro—

He left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alternative titles for this fic: “lance meets adam” and “klance shenanigans” and “keith’s brain goes bzzzt”
> 
> title comes from off i go by greg laswell
> 
> i’ll post part 2 in a few days and hopefully this won’t be much longer than that but look out for SO. MANY. klance shenanigans with long-suffering hunk in part 2


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> keith has it out with two people he loves.

(Lance woke to an empty apartment. He peered around corners and crept into the kitchen, certain he was going to stumble into Adam or maybe Keith’s ghost, but it was just him and Red. He woke her up and carried her about so she could see, too.

“How about that, huh,” he said to her, though he wasn’t sure why, and Red was asleep in his hands anyways.)

 

***

 

3 Missed Calls from TAKASHI

 

TAKASHI: what do you mean it went badly?

 

***

 

Keith took a volleyball to the face and, fuck, did that hurt.

Mike Donoghue thought it was hilarious, but he helped Keith hold a towel to his bleeding face until the world stopped spinning.

“At least it’s not broken,” Mike said cheerfully as they wandered onto quad after practice, Keith still holding an ice pack to his nose.

It was warm enough that they had their jackets open, and Mike kept leaning towards the morning sunlight with a sigh and a wobble. “Springtime,” he’d sigh, and he’d ignore Keith saying that it was still too soon for that.

“I guess,” Keith muttered and lifted the ice pack so he could poke, experimentally, at his nose. He flinched. He hissed. He replaced the ice pack.

“You seem tired.”

They slowed where they usually parted, outside the administration building and by a battered set of bike racks. Mike would huff his way towards his chem lecture, and Keith would wander away for more coffee before his theory class.

“I don’t.”

“Ah, yes. I’m imagining you got whacked in the face.”

“I stopped paying attention. It won’t happen again.” Keith shifted the ice pack and grimaced and sighed. He looked back at Mike and blinked when he noticed much of the cheer had drained from Mike’s face and he was looking at Keith, now, with a strange mix of concern and irritation. “What?”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“I’m serious,” Mike pressed. “Are you okay?”

Keith looked away. He shrugged. “I’m great. Maybe I’m tired.” Another shrug, just for good measure. “My—ambiguous family relation is visiting.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you around.”

“Keith,” Mike started.

“Bye,” Keith said, and he turned and didn’t look back because something a little like guilt was beginning to stir in his stomach and all he could suddenly think about was his imagined image of Lance, alone in their kitchen.

 

***

 

There were only seven of them left in Keith’s theory class and Professor Bell still hadn’t learned any of their names and Keith hadn’t learned any of his classmates’ names. Every Tuesday and Thursday, class was seventy-five minutes of what could pass for hell, except for the days when Bell’s lecture on whatever critic they were tackling was interesting. Keith tried to write down every word she said on those days, but still came out with a headache and no clue what any of  _ that _ had to do with the reading he’d done.

He’d done well on the midterm, however—so something must have stuck?

Today’s reading was an excerpt that Keith half-understood from a book he’d probably never read, and it made him think of  _ Jane Eyre _ and remember that he’d never finished it and that Adam called that a “travesty” even though he had  _ also _ hated the book.

“We finish what we start,” Adam had said once, waving Keith’s second-hand copy of  _ Jane Eyre _ .

Keith had ignored him.

He held the ice pack to his nose until it started to drip and then set it aside, ignoring the small puddle it made on the table. He touched his nose, gingerly, just to see what hurt, and he tapped his pen against his notepad and he tried to think of attics, and madwomen, and angels and monsters. Bell’s lecture became white noise, like scratching at the back of his head or buzzing in his ears, and soon Keith wasn’t thinking anything at all, like he’d somehow reduced himself to the rhythmic tapping of his pen.

Maybe he dozed off.

He blinked, and Bell was suddenly in front of him, frowning and tilting her head so her greying hair fell over one of her eyes. 

Keith dropped his pen and he wondered if he had ever seen his professor outside of the safe little bubble of her podium.

“Keith,” she said, and that made him want to run because apparently he’d been wrong and apparently— “Are you alright?”

“Great,” he managed. “I’m great.”

Bell eyed him, her hands on her hips and her head still tilted. “If you’re unwell, go home.”

“I’m fine.”

She hovered for a moment more, then nodded more to herself than Keith, and turned away. Keith watched her walk back to her podium and noticed, for the first time, that she limped, that she seemed to teeter to one side, that she held onto the podium as she talked, and he started to wonder what else he had missed and what else he had been wrong about.

He all but leapt to his feet and wobbled, for a moment, and Bell kept talking even as Keith’s classmates looked at him, frowning or glaring or just blinking. He gathered his things and scooped up the ice pack and darted towards the door, and Bell continued her lecture as if giving him room to escape. He dropped the ice pack in the garbage on his way out and flinched at the  _ bang _ of it hitting the plastic bottom, and flinched at the  _ screech _ of the door as he pushed through it, and froze at the ringing in his ears in the sudden quiet in the hall.

They called it the fishbowl.

Well, it was one of many places called “the fishbowl” on the arts side of campus. Here, the curved wall of windows seemed to concentrate sunlight so the little hallway felt hot and stuffy and very bright, but on the other side of the glass was the peaceful, crackling white of the snow that would stick around for another month or so. So Keith stared at it, and he tried to count the specks of sparkles, and he looked at the trees, and he thought about spring, and he waited until the noise in his ears and his chest slowed down.

When he finally started moving again, he felt loud and too big in the mostly empty hallway. He shoved his notepad and pen and highlighter back into his backpack as he went, and tried to blink sunlight from his eyes. He was sweating in his jacket and under the weight of his backpack. He wanted to throw himself back into a shower, any shower, and just run cold water over his face and his hair and down his back.

He went home.

He ran home, his sneakers sliding against patches of ice and half-melted snow on the sidewalks. He took shortcuts he never took, cutting across lawns and through the elementary school’s field and ignoring the way the kids at recess pointed at him. The cuffs of his pants were dripping by the time he got to his and Lance’s building, and the canvas of his shoes was soaked, and his toes were freezing, and maybe the noise in his head was a little quieter but the hammer of his heart hadn’t slowed. Keith sucked in a breath and felt a little of the winter chill, still, under the mounting sunlight and he darted through the doors.

Adam’s shoes weren’t by the door anymore, but his tiny red suitcase was sitting against the wall, looking neat and square and round all at once. Keith dropped his backpack and stared at the suitcase, frowning and trying and failing to slow his heart. He wondered if he’d been holding his breath, as he went. He wondered if he’d expected Adam to be gone already. 

Lance’s shoes were untouched, still shoved unceremoniously to the side.

Keith peeled off his sneakers and stood by the front door in his mostly-wet socks. He wiggled his toes. He peeled off his socks and dropped them next to Lance’s shoes and he started down the hall towards their bedroom in his cold, bare feet.

Lance looked up when Keith stepped into the room, the end of a highlighter held between his teeth and his biochemistry textbook propped open against his knees.

Keith shut the door behind him.

Lance had nested: blankets and pillows were piled around him, including ones from their living room. He was wearing one of Hunk’s sweaters (too big but apparently very comfortable) and his hair was wild and a little curly and very brown. He blinked at Keith, his eyes huge, and pulled the highlighter away from his mouth. There was a shuffle and a squeak and Red poked her head out from a bundled towel next to Lance and wiggled her ears.

“Keith?” Lance said.

And— _ pop _ .

Everything in Keith slowed.

“Lance,” he breathed, and then shook his head. He shrugged out of his jacket and made to toss it onto their dresser and missed.

Lance was hunched and looked a little sheepish, his long fingers clutching his textbook and his eyes shifting to Red, to Keith, to Red, and then back to Keith. “Uh,” he said. “I slept in.” He hunched some more, like he had tried to shrug and got stuck along the way.

“You were tired,” Keith said and came to the edge of the bed. He dragged his fingers against the sheets and thought about taking hold and just—pulling.

“Yeah.” Another hunch, and a slump, and Lance frowned down at his textbook. “Man, my prof probably thinks I’m flaky and—I don’t know, useless or something.” He paused. “I guess I’m a little flaky.”

“You’re not,” Keith said and clambered onto the bed. He pulled Red from her little nest and brushed his thumb between her ears. She twitched her nose at him. 

“Eh,” Lance grunted. “Maybe I should drop the class. Maybe—“

“Don’t drop the class,” Keith interrupted and slid back off the bed. “You’re doing fine.”

“I could do better.”

“Maybe.” He slipped Red back into her home and watched her waddle towards her little cave. She had been so soft in his hands, even with her spiky little hamster-feet.

“Keith.”

He turned and Lance blinked at him.

“How bad has it been?” Keith asked.

“How bad has what been?” Lance closed his textbook and set it aside, on top of Red’s towel-nest. “Are you okay?”

“Adam told me he found you in the kitchen last night,” Keith continued, and he sat at the edge of the bed and pressed his hand flat against the mattress and felt a little like he was melting. 

Lance pulled the blankets tighter around himself and frowned.

Keith couldn’t help but look at him, and maybe he was staring but there was still that ache in him that roared for him to act, for him to reach out and take Lance close and love him.

_ Love _ him.

“Yeah,” Lance said and squirmed. “He seemed a little— I mean, you’d know better than me, but—” He broke off and shook his head. “Is that what’s bothering you? You talked to Adam?”

“It is. I did.”

And there was a moment where Keith wanted to look away, where he wanted to look anywhere else—his feet, the bed, at Red, anywhere, anyone else. It didn’t last. The urge was swallowed whole, crushed and destroyed, and all that was left in its wake was Lance: his eyes, his hair, his nose, his mouth, his legs and his hands; Keith’s memories of his voice, of his own name on Lance’s lips, and of the time he had kissed the inside of Lance’s wrist and felt him shiver.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in class?” Lance asked quietly.

“I left,” Keith said. “I was distracted. I got hit in the face this morning.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t going to mention that.”

“Lance,” Keith said, feeling serious and insistent. “How bad has it been?”

Lance blinked at him. “About the same,” he admitted eventually. “Sometimes it’s just—I just can’t sleep, sometimes.”

“Sometimes.”

“I just stay awake until I’m tired, and then I go to sleep.” Lance shrugged, the blankets shifting with him. “That’s all.”

“I didn’t even know you got up last night,” Keith muttered, and slid further up the bed. He reached for Lance and Lance squirmed a hand free to meet him partway, twisting their fingers together. “Usually, I think I—”

“I’m very sneaky,” Lance cut in with a quirk of his lips. “I can usually slip out of bed without you noticing.”

“Usually,” Keith echoed, and imagined himself choking on the word. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Or, why didn’t he notice? Why—

Lance squeezed his hand. “I’m fine! I’m good. I’m great. I just— I didn’t want you to worry about me. I know how you get—”

“How I  _ get _ ?”

“Yeah! How you get.”

They frowned at each other, and then Lance looked away and at their hands. He tapped his fingers against the back of Keith’s hand once, twice, and then sighed. 

“Lance,” Keith tried.

Another tap, almost a drum, of Lance’s fingers.

“Lance, look at me.”

It took a moment, but Lance did, reluctantly lifting his chin again and scowling when their eyes met. He squirmed some more. “Could you, I don’t know,  _ stop _ looking at me?”

“No.”

“You’re freaking me out.”

“Fine.”

“Keith—”

“I love you,” Keith said, insistent and sure. “I love you, and that means that I want to take care of you.

“I’m trying to care of you, too,” Lance grumbled, but he didn’t look away again and Keith thought:  _ progress _ .

“Keeping things from me isn’t taking care of me.” 

“What do you want me to say, huh? ‘Hey pudding—‘“

“Lance.”

“‘—sometimes I sleep not so well. How about that!’”

Lance glared.

Keith squeezed his hand.

Lance glared some more.

“Yeah,” Keith said eventually. “You say that.”

“And then what?” Lance huffed and pulled his hand away and that stung, just a little, like Keith was left holding nothing, just curling his fingers back into his palm— Lance flopped back against the pillows and blinked his outrage at the ceiling. “And then you know, I guess. And then you worry or something. And you say stuff, probably.” Lance pointed at Keith without raising his head. “I know you.”

Keith shuffled up the bed and lay on his elbows, blinking at Lance. He thought he could feel Lance’s warm through his blanket nest, maybe hear the whir of Lance’s brain-gears as he worked himself up towards full-on rambling. 

“Lance,” he tried.

Lance huffed, but rolled slightly so they were looking at each other again. Keith watched him blink, watched his lips quirk.

“How’s your face?” Lance asked.

Keith shrugged, or tried to. “Fine. Swelling’s come down.”

“What happened?”

“I was distracted.” Keith squirmed the rest of the way up the bed and Lance shifted, just a little, for him and they lay back on a pillow together. “Why haven’t you been sleeping?”

“I’ve been sleeping. Don’t make it sound like a thing.” Lance tossed the edge of one of the blankets over Keith. It slid away and Lance huffed again and added, very quietly, “It’s not a thing.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s nothing.”

Why was he doing this? Why pull away exactly when, maybe, he should be reaching for Keith? Had he told Hunk? Had he told Eli? Had Keith done something to make Lance think  _ no, I’ll keep this to myself _ ?

“Lance,” Keith tried again. “Talk to me.” He sounded a little pathetic, even to his own ears, and a little desperate, too. 

He was scared, maybe. He wanted to be enough, maybe.

He imagined, again, Lance staring out the kitchen window while Keith himself slept on in their bed, unaware and unconcerned.

Lance put a hand against Keith’s cheek, then, and Keith’s world went  _ pop _ once more. A little more focus. A little more clarity. His thoughts stilled, or halted, so quickly he thought he could feel his own brain crashing into itself.

“You’re worried, now,” Lance muttered, brushing his thumb over Keith’s lips. “And it’s nothing, you know? It’s silly.”

Keith held himself very still, waiting.

“It’s just bad dreams, sometimes,” Lance said, slowly, dragging the words like a confession through his hesitation. “Other times I just can’t...slow down, you know?”

Keith didn’t. Not really. Not that he realized, anyways.

He wanted to know. Or, he wanted to understand.

“It’s not even all the time,” Lance continued. “It’s not even— It’s really not a—a thing, okay?”

“Tell me.”

“Tell you  _ what _ ?”

“Anything. Something.”

Lance paused, then, like he had pressed some internal button that Keith couldn’t reach, and Lance looked at Keith so long and unblinkingly Keith started to wonder if there was any colour in the world but blue—

Lance smiled. “It’s better when you’re here.”

Keith blinked. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Tension, coiling and uncoiling in his chest. He wanted a little relief, a little bit of pleasure, but his skin felt tight and cold and Lance’s hand felt heavy against his cheek.

“Come on, Keith,” Lance whispered, his smile faltering and it hurt to watch.

“I’m not always here,” Keith said. 

“Keith.”

“I  _ can’t _ always be here.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“You’re not asking me anything.” Keith rolled away and sat up, feeling suddenly cold and exposed. He wiggled his toes just to be sure he still could. “You’re not  _ telling _ me anything.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

Keith looked from his bare toes, to the edge of their bed, to their closed bedroom door, and he tried very hard not to think. He felt the bed shift and heard Lance shuffling behind him.

“Keith,” Lance said. “What are you thinking?”

He thought he felt Lance’s fingers brush against his back and he pulled away, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. He took a deep breath and then stood. The bedroom, the apartment, was so cold—no wonder Lance had piled all the blankets around himself, had tucked Red in a towel. It wasn’t even that cold outside, but it was wet and it was just a little windy and the blinds were closed so none of the early-spring/late-winter sunlight was getting in.

Keith turned and shoved his quivering hands in his pockets and looked at Lance, looking back up at him with his hair messy and his eyes huge and his mouth twisted into a frown. 

“Keith,” Lance said again, like a bell bringing Keith back to himself.

“I should get back to class,” Keith said, curling and uncurling his toes.

Lance stared at him. “What?”

“Yeah, I—” Keith broke off with a shrug and looked away and tried to swallow down the roil and boil in his throat. He shook his head. He shrugged again. “I should go.”

“ _ Keith _ .”

He didn’t recognize the roll of Lance’s voice, then, or the exasperated groan under his own name. He knew he didn’t want to hear it again, or feel the shock of it like cold water in his veins again.

“There’s, like, ten minutes left in your class.”

“Yeah.” He scooped his jacket off the floor and clutched it tight in one hand. “Yeah. I’ll be back later.”

“Keith—”

“I’ll be back later,” he repeated as he opened the door.

 

***

 

We all want to think—

 

***

 

“Hold the  _ fuck _ up.”

Keith froze, halfway out the door and still clutching the handle and his jacket and feeling vaguely sweaty. It was a little like he’d been caught—

“You’re running away?” Lance snapped, and Keith’s sweaty feeling became a lot less vague. “Are you kidding me?”

Keith wondered, with his mind spinning, where Lance had learned  _ that _ tone from, with its authority and its ability to inspire, apparently, a little bit of guilty panic.

He grimaced.

He steeled himself.

He turned around, just enough to scowl at Lance. “I’m not running away.”

“That’s exactly what you’re doing.”

Lance was cross-legged now, the blankets still piled around him so he seemed almost comical with his furrowed brow and the harsh tapping of his fingers against his knee as he glared at Keith. 

“No,” Keith retorted, with eloquence.

“Close the door,” Lance said.

Keith thought about slamming it. He also thought about making a run for it.

He shut the door, slowly, and the click of it was loud in the sudden quiet of their bedroom. He peeled his hand from the door handle. 

“I can’t believe this,” Lance muttered and Keith watched with mild alarm and Lance unfolded himself from the bed and stomped to Keith. “Really. Like. What the hell.”

“Lance,” Keith started, and he thought about yelling and then Lance pinched him and Keith squawked and let Lance wrestle his coat away.

“Go to the nest,” Lance said and tossed Keith’s coat, successfully, onto the dresser. 

“What?”

“Go to the nest.” Lance pointed with a harsh jab at the bed once, twice, three times.

“Don’t pinch me again.”

“Go to the nest, then!”

Keith didn’t, at first. He glared. He twitched, just a little. And then Lance crossed his arms and leaned in,  _ just a little _ , and scowled and Keith huffed and turned and clambered onto the bed, cursing.

“I can’t believe this,” Lance muttered again, watching Keith reluctantly settle in the pile of blankets.

Keith spread his arms. “I’m in the nest,” he snapped. “What now, huh?”

“You suck at nesting.”

“I do not.”

“Uh,” Lance said with a roll of his eyes. He uncrossed his arms and made his way back to the bed with considerable more grace than Keith had. “You kind of do.” He draped one of the living room blankets over Keith’s shoulders and it felt very ridiculous, to Keith, to be draped in fuzzy yellow warmth while still trying to stoke the fire of his outrage.

“No, I don’t,” he grumbled. “Why am I in the nest?”

“Because I told you to get in the nest,” Lance replied easily, settling more blankets and pillows around Keith in a rough approximation of his earlier nest. “I’m kind of surprised that worked.”

“You pinched me.”

“Had to wake you up, somehow.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” Lance said, and irritation was starting to bleed back into his voice. “That you were being really, really annoying.”

“Was I,” Keith said drily.

“Yeah, you really were.”

Keith snapped his mouth shut and clutched at the edges of the yellow blanket.

“You were really just going to leave,” Lance muttered, sitting back on his heels. Red squeaked, as though in support of one of them, but didn’t emerge from her cave. “Just—up and go. Right in the middle of an argument.”

“Is that what that was,” Keith grumbled.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what it was.”

He closed his mouth again.

“You can’t just—walk away,” Lance continued quietly, surveying his nest-work and not meeting Keith’s eyes. “We’re in this together, you know. And if I can figure out how to stay when I’m overwhelmed,  _ you _ can figure out how to stay.”

“I wasn’t overwhelmed.”

Lance looked at him, finally, frowning.

Keith hunched under the blanket.

“God, your nose,” Lance mumbled and brushed his fingers over Keith’s cheek. They flinched together. “Yikes.”

“‘s fine.” Keith squirmed. “It’s not as bad as it looks.” He squirmed some more, and thought of Mike and added: “At least it’s not broken.”

“At least.” Lance rolled his eyes and pulled his hand back and there was that gooey feeling again, in the pit of Keith’s stomach, making him want to chase after Lance’s touch.

“I was just distracted,” Keith continued. “It’s fine.”

“You were just distracted, and then you just decided to ditch class, even though you love that weird class.”

“I do?”

Lance frowned at him. “Uh, yeah. You probably zone out and daydream about being as bizarre as your professor—uh, what’s her name—”

“Bell,” Keith said, his mouth dry and his head spinning still. “Luci Bell—”

“Yeah, her. You’re gonna be her, you know. You’re gonna be a droning professor babbling about—de-escalation in Shakespeare or something—in, like, twenty years.”

“De-escalation—what?”

“I made it up.” Lance tapped Keith’s chin, gentle and grounding and Keith was finally and suddenly glad he hadn’t left. “You’re all over the place today.”

“Maybe,” Keith allowed.

Lance studied him, and Keith thought he looked tired and a little less bright than usual, and it made Keith’s stomach lurch. Lance’s fingers pressed against the line of his jaw and Keith started to lean into him and then Lance tilted and kissed him, sweet and quick and warm.

Yes,  _ pop _ .

Lance pulled back and Keith let out a long breath and felt himself start to deflate.

“I want you to tell me,” Keith said, slow and steady.

“Huh?”

“When something’s wrong.” He swallowed and tried to keep the warmth of Lance’s kiss alive. “I want you to tell me. Whether it’s bad dreams or a headache or—” He broke off and sighed, shaking his head.

Lance leaned back and seemed to wait for a moment, and then said: “I know.”

“Then why—”

“I kind of thought you already knew,” Lance muttered and leaned back on his hands. He blinked at the ceiling. “And, you know, I didn’t want you to worry.”

Keith had known, a little. He’d suspected. There had been nights where he’d wake abruptly, as he did, and there would be Lance, blinking back at him like something out of one of Keith’s dreams. But he’d always trusted that he’d wake up, if Lance needed him. Say—if Lance woke in the middle of the night and felt the need to wander their apartment.

He knew so much less than he’d thought.

“Is it because Adam found me?” Lance said, jerking Keith from the start of another spiral. 

“What?”

Lance grimaced. “I mean, is that what makes last night—different.”

Maybe.

“Maybe,” Keith allowed. “If he hadn’t—I wouldn’t know, would I?”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Lance grumbled, almost sighed, like he was starting to wear. “I just couldn’t sleep.”

“Tell me,” Keith said. “I want to know, Lance. I want to know when you leave our bed in the middle of the night, or when you have a bad dream. I just—want to know.” He paused, and he and Lance looked at each other for a long moment. “I love you. Let me love you.”

Lance closed his eyes. He scratched at his knee, a little too hard to be idle. “Love me,” he repeated, and opened his eyes again. “You mean: take care of me.”

“That’s part of it, yeah.”

Lance was back to fussing at the blankets around Keith, tucking them tighter or pulling them loose. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Yeah.”

Keith waited, just a moment, and then let go of the yellow blanket to reach for Lance. “Yeah,” he started. “Lance—”

Lance pulled his hands back and crossed his arms. He bounced one knee so that it felt like the whole bed was shaking. “Our entire relationship has been you taking care of me,” Lance said, sounding bitter and annoyed and tired all at once. Keith froze. The blanket slipped from his shoulders and pooled around his waist. Lance continued, glaring down at a spot near one of Keith’s knees, buried under the blankets. “And it’s amazing how—freaking—loving you can be, and it’s great and stuff.”

And stuff, Keith thought.

“You ever think, maybe, that I want to take care of you, too?” Lance was suddenly still again, his arms held tight against his chest and his eyes still focused anywhere but Keith. “You’re so busy being loving that sometimes it’s like you won’t just be loved. Like, lean on me, just once in a while, you know?”

Keith reeled.

He opened his mouth. He closed it.

Lance finally looked at him, raising his chin just slightly.

“Lance,” Keith said, choking a little. “I lean on you all the time.”

The defiant set of Lance’s jaw loosened. Keith watched his expression soften into something vaguely sad, or exhausted. “Tell me about this morning, then,” Lance said. “Tell me what you and Adam talked about.”

Keith blinked. “He’s leaving,” he said. “That’s all.”

“That’s it.”

“And you. We talked about you.”

Lance’s shoulders slumped and his arms loosened. “You see what I mean?” he said.

“No.”

“You were going to leave.” Lance seemed to rock, for a moment, looking furled and uncomfortable. “You were going to go outside and kick snow or something and be mad at me and be mad at Adam and just be mad.”

Maybe. Maybe not. But the guilt churned again.

“I’m not saying you can’t have space or whatever, but—you ran away.”

“I tried to,” Keith mumbled. “You didn’t let me.”

Lance blinked, and then huffed and leaned in to start settling the yellow blanket around Keith’s shoulders again. “Yeah,” he said, smoothing the blanket.

“I’m sorry.”

Lance nodded and started to pull away. Keith caught his wrists, imagining just for a moment that they could melt into each other and let the rest of the world fade away.

The blanket drooped again. Lance frowned.

“I won’t do it again,” Keith said, holding tight.

Lance eyed him, and then sighed and pulled his wrists free. Keith had a moment of panic, and then Lance’s hands were on his shoulders, pushing him gently. They fell back, Keith’s folded legs protesting and Lance warm against him, and Lance said: “Yeah, you will.”

Keith scowled.

“It’s okay, though,” Lance continued, quiet so his words felt like breath on Keith’s cheeks. Lance’s lips twitched into a small smile. “I’ll catch you.”

“Oh,” Keith said.

“Yeah. I’m very fast.”

Lance fit so well against Keith: long, and warm, and he always smelled so good. It was automatic for Keith to wind his arms around Lance, to press his palms against Lance’s back just to feel the way Lance always, impossibly, shifted a little bit closer and a little bit tighter against him. Underneath his distinct, comforting Lance-smell was something faint, probably the cologne Hunk sometimes wore, or the lemon-scented spray Hunk sometimes used in his hair. Keith, cocooned under Lance and surrounded by the comfortable detritus of their life together, felt both safe and soothed and he wondered how Lance did—this. How Lance knew to do this.

“This is uncomfortable,” Keith lied.

Lance hummed, his arms resting on either side of Keith’s head, and his smile growing. 

Keith could look at him for days, like this. 

“I’m sorry,” Lance said eventually, his fingers threading gently into Keith’s hair (fly away now, messy, and maybe he needed a haircut but he loved when Lance ran his fingers through his hair or tugged at the ponytail he sometimes tied it into). 

“Me too.”

“Yeah, but it’s my turn.”

“It is.” Lance pecked the corner of his mouth and Keith sighed, and he deflated just a little bit more. “I didn’t mean to make you feel—” Lance stopped. He leaned back, just slightly, and his fingers stilled and he shook his head. “I’ll try.”

Keith considered this.

He took a long, slow breath in. He let a long, slow breath out.

“You’ll try and talk to me?”

“Yeah. I’ll try.”

“I want forever with you,” Keith said, his face warm and his heart stuttering in his chest. “I don’t want to run. I just—”

“I know,” Lance interrupted and pecked the other corner of Keith’s mouth, and Keith melted, just like he knew Lance knew he would. “I don’t want to run either.”

“Okay.”

Lance’s smile grew, just a little bit more. “Okay.”

“You have to get off me or I’m going to lose my legs.”

“Tragic.”

Lance didn’t move.

“I think I’m going crazy,” Keith muttered, his hands smoothing up and down Lance’s back in a gesture that he knew was more for him than Lance.

“Maybe,” Lance allowed with cheer. “Maybe we both are.”

“What do you do when I’m not here?”

“Huh?”

“When I’m not here and you can’t sleep. What do you do?”

Lance blinked, and then he turned just a little pink. “I, uh.”

“Go on.”

“I wear your clothes and I hang out with Red.”

Keith opened his mouth. He closed it.

“Well,” he started, and then snorted.

“Oh my god,” Lance groaned and pulled away just as Keith started laughing. “It’s not that weird, okay! Or—or funny, you jerk!”

Keith squirmed his way upright and out of the nest, laughing with the pins and needles in his legs, and grabbed at the back of Lance’s pilfered hoodie before Lance could throw himself off the bed. “Come back, come back.”

“Stop laughing!”

Keith snorted again, but Lance stayed where he was, hunched slightly near the edge of the mattress. His hair looked ruffled and the sweater too big for him and it was too much, for a moment, and Keith’s smile hurt his face (hurt his stupid, aching nose). 

“You’re right,” he said, slipping his arms around Lance’s waist. He pressed a kiss to the back of Lance’s neck and Lance melted back against him, warm against Keith’s chest. “It’s not funny. It’s just really—” Another bout of giggles threatened.

“Oh my god,” Lance grumbled. “You’re the worst. Actually. The  _ worst _ .”

Keith rested his chin on Lance’s shoulder and Lance, like a blessing from the universe, didn’t pull away. “It’s just cute,” he said. “I like it.” A pause. “It makes me happy.”

“It would, you horndog,” Lance replied, squirming in Keith’s arms. “Ugh.”

They settled, the laughter dying slowly from Keith’s cheeks and Lance’s blush fading. Even outside of the nest, Keith felt warm, like Lance had chased away the earlier chill.

Lance touched his hands, clasped together at Lance’s waist. “What happened this morning?”

“Nothing really,” Keith muttered, and distracted himself with a kiss to Lance’s shoulder. “We just...talked.”

“Keith.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Well,” Lance said slowly, dragging out the syllable. “You talked about me.”

A shock like static, like a flinch, deep in Keith’s chest.

“Yeah.”

“What did Adam say?”

“He said that you have sleep problems,” Keith muttered. Lance squirmed, but didn’t say anything, and Keith continued: “He said that he didn’t know how you wound up on the prairies.”

“Yeah.”

“He said you love me.”

“That’s true.”

“He said he needs to leave,” Keith muttered, and— _ pop _ , again, the burst of something both at the back of his mind and in the middle of his chest and encasing his heart. His throat tightened. He pressed his forehead to Lance’s shoulder and took a long breath and Lance, all through it, was quiet. Waiting.

And maybe that made Keith feel loved, like Lance loved him with a ferocity that could melt his bones.

“He’s right, you know,” Keith said, his nose throbbing and his throat aching. “No matter where he goes he’s still—” He broke off with a grimace.

“He’s still Adam,” Lance finished for him.

“Yeah.”

“But?”

But.

“I don’t know,” Keith admitted. “I just—”

Lance was tracing circles and stars with his fingers against the back of Keith’s hands. If Keith closed his eyes, he imagined he could see them, dancing across his vision like a message shared through skin and touch and soft kisses. Comfort and comforting.

“I think I’m disappointed,” he said. “I think I wanted something else.”

“They love each other,” Lance said quietly. “I don’t think you’re wrong about that. But it’s different now, Keith.”

And it took him a moment to realize what Lance was saying, what he meant, and then they heard the front door open and they both froze.

“I didn’t bring pizza this time,” came Adam’s voice in a holler down the hall. “So you’re going to have show me where we can get some good food!”

Lance snickered. “So many things about you have been explained,” he muttered.

And Keith didn’t know how to take that.

 

***

 

(When Keith was thirteen, he stopped “staying with the Holts” and started “having sleepovers with Katie and Matt.” They ate pizza, or pasta, or something equally carb-loaded, and they’d play video games and watch TV and eventually Katie started going by Pidge all the time.

After the first one—

After the first sleepover, Keith came home feeling cheerful and exhausted and he knew something was up the moment he closed the door behind him. Shiro came to the hall to greet him, and he looked simultaneously tired and rested.

“How was it?” Shiro asked, smiling wide.

“Fun,” Keith said and toed off his shoes and there was anticipation in his belly so he darted around Shiro.

“Keith?”

The kitchen was empty when he got to it, but there was Adam’s favourite mug drying on the dish rack and Shiro’s half-finished coffee still on the counter.

“Are you hungry?”

Keith whirled around and looked at Shiro and squinted. “Was Adam here?”

Shiro’s face twitched. “He was,” he said, and it was a little too casual for Keith’s taste. “He left just before you got here.”

“Uh huh,” Keith said.

“Don’t start,” Shiro replied, and Keith wondered when Shiro started to read his mind.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Keith sniffed and went to the fridge to find cheese.

“Cheese isn’t actually food, in and of itself.”)

 

***

 

“That sweater’s too big for you,” Adam said when they emerged from the bedroom.

Lance looked down. He tugged at Hunk’s sweater. “I like it,” he said.

“It’s not his,” Keith sighed, wiggling his toes in fresh socks. “It’s our friend Hunk’s.”

“It’s mine now.”

“Lance has a thing about other people’s clothes.”

Lance elbowed him and Keith snuck away and down the little hall toward Adam.

”What happened to your face?” Adam asked.

“Volleyball. Where have  _ you _ been?” Keith asked.

Adam shrugged. “Wandering. Let’s go get food.”

 

***

 

(Keith passed out on the couch while they watched a movie, and when he woke up Shiro was flipping through a book.

“That thing’s huge,” Keith said sleepily.

“Yeah,” Shiro said, and flipped  _ Middlemarch _ shut. He tossed it aside and shifted on the couch to look down at Keith. “Let’s get some dinner in you, and then you can go to bed properly.”

Keith yawned.

Shiro smiled.

And it was all very normal for them. This was Keith’s life, now: Shiro, and Adam, and the Holts, and volleyball, and books, and sleepy weekends and early morning rushes. 

Except there was something wrong, and he couldn’t put his finger on it, except that Shiro was being strange, and quiet, and he kept staring at his hand and flexing his fingers. Keith wondered if he should call Adam, or Sam, or anyone. Keith wondered if he could help Shiro, all on his own.

“Are you okay?” he asked, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

Shiro looked at him and blinked. His smile was slow to come. “Yeah,” he said. “I just—slept well.”

“Is that bad?”

“I don’t know,” Shiro said, but he ended the conversation there with a poke to Keith’s knee. “Food time.”

“Dangerous,” Keith sighed.

“Ungrateful.”)

 

***

 

Adam had a restaurant in mind.

He didn’t even try to keep pretending that he was letting Keith and Lance show him around.

“There’s a Japanese place over there,” Adam said, pointing vaguely—forward when they got outside. “It’s called—something or other.”

“Oh,” Lance said. “I know that place.”

And the worst part, for Keith, was that Lance actually did know what Adam was babbling about.

“Yes,” Adam said with more authority than, frankly, he deserved. “Let’s go there.”

“What the hell,” said Keith, and Lance patted his shoulder.

They started walking.

Keith tried to get Adam to elaborate on what “wandering” entailed, but Adam just shrugged and made stupid gestures and said: “I saw this and that and got lost a little.”

“You got  _ lost _ a little?”

“It’s part of the fun.”

“It’s not.”

And Lance watched all of this with a small smile and big eyes and everything was alright. Except that Keith mostly had to focus on not looking at Lance, because something was unsettled and hot in his stomach and it made him want to press Lance against a wall or a tree and feel his pulse in his neck or his ribs under Keith’s hands—

Inappropriate, really.

Except that he couldn’t really look at Adam, either, because it made Keith’s throat close up and his teeth ache because Adam looked tired, and drained, and crooked despite how well-dressed and -groomed he was. It made him think about Adam sitting at their table and looking at him and Keith, himself, feeling inadequate and a little lost.

He started watching the trees and listening for birds and watching for slush puddles on the sidewalk. His sneakers were still wet.

Adam tried to lead the way. Lance corrected him a few times and Adam nodded vigorously as if he’d figured it out on his own and Keith kept wondering: what the hell.

Lance and Adam talked.

“Did you have class today?”

“Oh, yeah. Uh. I slept through my morning lecture. But I’ve got a calculus tutorial later!”

“That sounds awful.”

“I mean—”

“Lance likes math,” Keith said while they waited for a light to change so they could cross the street.

“You do?”

Adam and Shiro had nurtured a strong distaste for numbers in Keith.

Lance coughed. “Yeah. Uh.  _ Yeah _ , I kind of do.”

“That’s interesting.”

Keith snorted. Lance poked his side and Adam elbowed him. He suffered it all.

They got to the restaurant and Adam and Lance leaned together to read the menu stuck to the front door. Keith blinked at the signage and tried, and failed, to remember if they’d been here before.

“Have we been here before?”

“Uh,” Lance said, rubbing his chin. “I don’t know. I think, like, once? With Hunk?”

That sounded typical.

“This Hunk guy,” Adam said, leaning back with his hands in his coat pocket. “Am I going to meet him?”

He looked at Keith.

Keith frowned. “I’m not subjecting him to that.”

Adam pinched his cheek. Keith suffered that, too, while Lance hid his laughter.

“I grew up with Hunk,” Lance said cheerfully once Keith had batted Adam away. “And we all lived on the same floor last year.”

“He comes over a lot,” Keith added.

“And you do stuff? The three of you?”

“Yeah.”

“Yup.”

Adam considered this. “I’ll meet him next time,” he decided, and led the way into the restaurant. 

“I like him,” Lance half-whispered to Keith before ducking after Adam.

“I heard that,” Adam said, sounding pleased which was never a good sign.

Keith gave himself a moment to stare up at the clear, blue skies and relish in the late-winter/early-spring sunlight, and then heaved a sigh and followed his boyfriend and—Adam.

“Next time,” he muttered and Lance grabbed his hand and beamed and Adam made cheery, awkward small talk with anyone within earshot and Keith—

Well.

Maybe he kept looking for Shiro, and maybe he felt both very young and very old.

 

***

 

HUNK: he what

HUNK: no keith i can’t do that i’ll actually die i can’t meet your AFR

 

***

 

Keith kicked Lance under the table.

“Rude,” Lance said.

Adam watched them.

Keith shoved his phone into Lance’s hands and pointed, a little aggressively, at the text message. 

“Look what you’ve done.”

“Put your phone away,” Adam said, sounding both bored and curious.

Keith ignored him.

“Kids these days.”

“It’s—” Lance broke off and—giggled, just a little, or chuckled, or whatever, and it was adorable and annoying all at once and Keith felt a little like yelling. “It’s just—”

“Do  _ not _ tell him.”

“You brought it up,” Adam said, leaning his elbows on the table and peering at Lance and then at Keith. “What have you done?”

“I haven’t  _ done _ anything.”

“Hunk and I didn’t know what to, you know, call you,” Lance said, sliding Keith’s phone back along the edge of the table. 

Keith gaped at him.

Adam frowned. “Adam,” he said. “You...call me Adam.”

“No. I mean.” Lance cleared his throat, and slowly seemed to realize that he had bitten off a little more than he could chew. Much of the humour drained from his face. “Like, Shiro is Keith’s brother, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re…” Lance trailed off, presumably hoping that Adam would put the pieces together and Adam—did not.

“I’m Adam,” Adam said with a slight shake of his head.

“That’s what I said,” Keith said triumphantly.

“That’s—” Lance frowned. “That’s not really an answer, guys.”

“Anyways,” Keith said, slumping back in his seat. “They call you my—” and with air quotes: “‘ambiguous familial relation.’”

“What?”

“And now Hunk’s has shortened that to AFR.”

“Affer,” Lance suggested.

“No,” Keith said.

Adam looked between them. He drummed his fingers against the table. He looked back at Keith. “Do not—”

“I won’t tell Shiro.”

Adam nodded, satisfied. “Good boy.”

“I’m not a dog.”

“No,” Adam agreed. “You’re my affer.” He looked at Lance, who seemed to be choking a little on nothing at all. “Or is that a misapplication?”

“I have no idea,” Lance managed.

 

***

 

“ _ So _ many things,” Lance whispered.

“What?”

“About you.”

“What?”

“I understand a little now.”

“ _ What _ ?”

And Lance patted Keith’s elbow and drank, probably, too much tea.

 

***

 

HUNK: don’t be mad keith

HUNK: come on

HUNK: it’s really clever

HUNK: it was lance’s idea

HUNK: i want to make brownies tomorrow

 

***

 

“I bought you something, Lance.”

“Oh!”

“I got your e-mail from Keith’s non-ambiguous familial relation.”

“...naffer.”

“Yes. It should be there now, if you want to check. ...stop making that face, Keith.”

“...not making any face.”

“It’s—an audiobook?”

“It’s just a short story, so it isn’t long. You might like it. I think they’re making a TV series based off it.”

“I—thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

 

***

 

KEITH <3: put walnuts in the brownies

KEITH <3: please

 

***

 

TAKASHI: would you stop meddling please

TAKASHI: keith WILL kill you

 

***

 

Lunch, in the end, wasn’t so bad.

Keith realized, late into the meal, that he was anxious about—everything. There was something very different about sitting in an almost-nice restaurant, eating mostly-good food. The night before, with pizza and tea and the warmth of their home, Lance and Adam had—managed. Yes. Managed, that seemed the best way to think of it. They’d met. They’d  _ conversed _ . They’d apparently had a late night rendezvous. Then, they sat across the table from each other, with Keith secure on Lance’s left, and a bustling restaurant around them.

Public.

And Adam didn’t do anything  _ too _ weird, and Lance only twitched a little, and Keith was predictably grumpy about the whole thing but also relieved and quietly, intensely happy.

And slowly, the irritated roiling of Keith’s stomach started to settle and he listened to Lance tell Adam about his family, and he listened to Lance ask Adam about himself.

Keith learned that Adam had lived in Ontario for a couple of years when he was young. He learned that Adam studied abroad in Scotland in his second year, and he learned that—

“You  _ what _ ?”

Adam frowned at him and buttoned up his coat. Lance hovered nearby, looking pleased and—downright gleeful.

“I learned Spanish in school,” he said. “You need a second language for an Arts degree.” He paused, and then put a heavy hand on Keith’s shoulder. “Keep that in mind.”

Keith scowled. “How did I not know this?”

“What? Did I miss the day where we were supposed to do an inventory of my special skills? Do you listen in on my conversations with my grandmother?”

“You talk to your grandmother in  _ Spanish _ ?”

“No,” Adam said. “But I would, if she was still alive.”

Lance, trying and failing to hide a new bout of laughter, stepped away and slipped in a slush pile with a squawk. Keith tried to catch him, cursing, and then they fell together against a car with a  _ thunk _ and a series of “fucking fucks” from Keith.

“Yikes,” Lance said, and then giggled just a little.

Which, admittedly, made Keith smile.

“You’re an odd pair,” Adam said, watching them with his hands back in his pockets and his glasses sliding down his nose.

“I guess,” Keith said and let Lance pull him properly upright again. Lance kicked at the slush pile for good measure.

Or revenge.

Adam pulled a hand from his pocket and straightened his glasses and said: “You’re good together.”

Keith blinked.

“Oh,” Lance said. “Thanks.”

Adam nodded and then, with the exaggerated sort of stiffness only Adam could muster, he turned away and took three steps and stared up into a bare tree.

“You’re so thoughtful,” Keith said to his back, loudly.

“Say your goodbyes, you ungrateful child.”

“Don’t trust him,” Keith started. “He’s sneaky when he—”

Lance interrupted him with a kiss, loud and a little wet, and with a hand warm against Keith’s cheek.

“Oh,” Keith said.

Lance beamed at him, and Keith started to suspect that Lance was a little restless too. Maybe Lance thought about pushing his hands through Keith’s hair or ducking into a corner together or—

“Get on with it,” Adam said.

Keith blushed.

Lance, because he was who he was, just smiled some more and slapped his hand to his side.

“I’ll see you in, eh, an hour maybe.”

“Do you need to go home first?”

“Nah.” Lance, with drama, whipped a mechanical pencil from his jacket pocket. “All you need is a pencil, pumpkin.”

And they grimaced at each other.

“Okay, I don’t like that one either.” 

Lance left with a kiss to Keith’s cheek and a “thank you for lunch!” to Adam. Adam and Keith watched him cross the street, watched him slip a little more on the other side, and then watched him wave at them one more time before he turned a corner to make his way back toward campus.

“He’s odd,” Adam said. “I like him.”

“Me too.”

And they were alone.

“Keith,” Adam started, and Keith stared across the street, half-convinced he could see an afterimage of Lance hurrying away. Adam sighed. 

“Do you want to go back to the apartment?” Keith said eventually, looking at his feet now. “Or we could...wander, I guess.”

“Sure.”

“Sure what?”

“Whatever you want.”

Keith looked up, finally, and Adam was looking right back at him. There was a slight, sunny sheen to his glasses that made him look half-mad and very Adam-like all at once, and Keith was struck for a moment at how much taller he felt, meeting Adam’s eyes with ease.

“Let’s go home,” Keith said, almost mumbled, and Adam nodded. “Where did you wander to, anyways?”

“Around here,” Adam said, which Keith thought was obvious. “Found a bookshop. It was closed. Bought a chai tea from a hipster shop. It was okay.”

“Picked out a lunch spot.”

“Picked out a lunch spot,” Adam affirmed, and they started walking together and Keith felt a little aimless, a little awkward, unsure where he should put his feet or his attention. “That wasn’t so bad.”

No, it hadn’t been so bad. It had been good, really, and Keith wanted to say that. He wanted to say: thank you for coming. And: thank you for talking to Lance. And: thank you for making the time for me and him and for us.

Instead, he said: “Yeah. Thanks for lunch.”

“You’re welcome.”

They kept walking. They waited to cross the street. Adam tugged Keith back from the curb as a bus went by and Keith didn’t grumble.

He tried to remember the last time they’d been so—awkward. Maybe never. Adam had always taken Keith in stride and Keith had always just accepted Adam was the way that he was.

Keith swallowed. They crossed the street.

“What’s over there?” Adam asked, pointing.

Keith squinted. “Uh, houses, I think.”

Adam gave him a look and Keith shrugged.

They walked. Keith tried to imagine he could see Lance’s footprints in the snow as they went, trailing behind Adam’s or next to Keith’s as they had made their way to the restaurant.

And then Adam said: “I was trying to imagine you wandering around here.”

Keith looked at him. His sneakers squelched. “What?”

Adam shrugged. “This is your life now, isn’t it? Here, and Lance, and your school. And I felt a little too old to try stalking you around campus—”

“I appreciate that.”

“—so I wandered around...here.” Adam paused. He made a soft humming sound that Keith thought he imagined, just for a moment. “I tried to imagine you and Lance going to the weird hipster shop with its loud music and its weird lights. Or, you in the bookshop dragging too many books off the shelves and Lance looking long-suffering. I tried to imagine you and the Hunk guy, too, but I don’t know what he looks like so that didn’t work.”

“You could have made something up,” Keith said around the renewed tightness in his throat.

“I could have,” Adam agreed with a crooked quirk of his lips. “But I figured making up a weird brain-image of your friend would give you another excuse to be mad at me.”

“Nice segway.”

“Keith.”

Adam caught the sleeve of Keith’s jacket and Keith was suddenly ten-years-old again, caught in the hallway trying to listen in on Adam and Shiro.

He pulled away. Adam let him go.

The snow was tacky under Keith’s sneakers, clinging wetly to the canvas. His toes were cold. His neck was warm. He frowned at the spot of sidewalk between them.

“Let’s just keep going,” Keith muttered. “It’s not far—”

“I’m not leaving you,” Adam said, and Keith hunched into his jacket and shoved his hands in his pockets and clenched his jaw. “I’m leaving, but I’m not leaving  _ you _ .”

“I know.”

“Do you.”

“Yeah, I do.” Keith shook his head and turned, still hunched, to continue down the sidewalk. A moment later he heard Adam behind him,  _ squelch-crack-squelch _ as he walked.

“Keith,” Adam said to his back.

Keith shook his head again. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I know.”

“I’m not mad at you.”

“Liar.”

Keith stopped so abruptly he slipped, just a little, on some hard-packed snow and new ice. He blinked at the empty sidewalk ahead. He listened to a dog barking in a yard nearby. He heard a car honk, far away.

He turned around and Adam frowned at him, just out of reach.

“You’re leaving. I get it.” He licked his lips, willing his throat to open up again. “I get it—I mean it. I’m not asking you to—to put your life on hold or whatever for me—”

“Keith—”

“No, just—just listen.”

Adam sighed, but he stayed quiet, his lips pressed into a thin line so he looked so much older than he was.

Tired.

It wasn’t the first time that Keith felt like a burden, like a weight dragging Adam (or Shiro, or Sam and Colleen, or—) down and back. It was one of the first times, though, that he was able to squish it down and look at Adam looking at him and think:  _ he’ll always be mine and I’ll always be his _ . He wanted that to be more reassuring than it was.

“No matter where you go, we’re family,” Keith said, dredging up what was left of his courage and outrage. “I know that. I’m not scared that you’ll go away and we’ll never talk again or whatever. But I think—fuck, I don’t know.”

Adam’s shoulders slumped. He opened his mouth. He closed it. He shook his head.

Keith looked away. He rubbed his chin against the collar of his jacket. He wiggled his cold toes.

He looked back at Adam.

“If you want to leave because you want to leave, fine,” Keith said, taking his time and sounding out each word carefully. “That’s all fine. But if you’re leaving because you’re scared, or because—I don’t know. But if you’re running away that’s...not fine.”

Adam frowned, his brow furrowing and his glasses sliding just slightly down his nose.

Keith breathed in through his nose. “Go wherever you want—it doesn’t matter, you’re not leaving me. But you’re leaving Shiro.” He paused. “That’s all.”

Adam groaned. He whirled away. He whirled back. Away again, his arms flapping like stuttered wings against his sides as he went. He pulled a hand from his pocket and rubbed the back of his neck and straightened his glasses and groaned again. It was all familiar expressions of a frustrated Adam, so like how Keith so often thought of him that Keith felt a little—affectionate, watching him. 

“Keith,” Adam said finally, and then made a garbled, irritated sound in the back of his throat. “ _ Keith _ .”

Keith squared his shoulders.

“You’re an adult,” Adam said, sounding a little desperate and more than a little annoyed. “You’re—a grown up, now. This shouldn’t be a  _ thing _ anymore. We broke up  _ years _ ago—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Keith snapped. “You split up. We all grew up. I get it.”

“I don’t think you do.”

Keith shook his head, his mouth twisting into a grimace that he felt all the way down his spine. “Lance’s parents are divorced, yeah?”

“Keith—”

“And his family’s all—blended happy and shit and that’s amazing, I think that’s really good. I’m excited to meet them. Etcetera. His parents made the best decision for them and I think that’s what makes it work for them.”

“Jesus christ.”

“Shiro,” Keith continued, and he was getting a little loud (a little too loud) and he knew it, but— “ _ Shiro _ ’s your best friend.  _ Shiro _ ’s your family just as much as me. And I’m here, Adam! I’m three hours away and the Holts are a phone call away and Shiro and you just expect each other to show up at inconvenient times and that’s  _ our _ version of blended happy shit.”

Adam was quiet, except that Keith could hear him breathing, could see the slight rise and fall of his shoulders. He was looking at Keith, still, even with his body turned away and both hands back in his pockets.

“You want to go, you go,” Keith said, and realized partway through the sentence that he wasn’t breathing anymore and his voice was starting to shake. “You want to run, you run. Just—be sure. If you’re really going to leave him, be sure.” He paused. He sucked in a deep breath. He swallowed it down around the tightness in his throat and the dark edges of his vision. “I’m just mad because I don’t think you are—sure.”

They were quiet, for a moment, and Keith thought about just walking away, just leading the way home and letting the conversation die with their footsteps.

“I left Takashi a long time ago,” Adam said eventually, blinking slowly at Keith.

And Keith considered this. His mouth twitched, and he wondered if he was going to smile, or laugh, or run. “You didn’t go very far,” he said.

“I didn’t stay with him,” Adam continued. “I stayed with you, Keith.”

“I know.”

“Families grow,” Adam said. “Families change.”

“I know.”

Adam took the step and a half toward him, pulling one hand back out of his pockets and reaching out and Keith had a sudden, vivid memory of Adam wiping blood from his face and ignoring the way Keith tried to push him away and saying: “You’re in charge of keeping someone I love, safe, kiddo. Do better.”

Keith wanted to do better, to be better.

Adam rested his hand on Keith’s shoulder, and they looked at each other for a long moment.

“Don’t be scared,” Adam said, and he smiled a small but warm smile. “I’m not.”

And Keith wanted to believe him.

 

***

 

(They continued walking.

And the thing in Keith’s throat grew tighter and harder and started to choke him.

And he had the feeling that he had made a terrible, awful, horrendous mistake.

And then Adam said, “I want to take you to Lethbridge, when you come home next.”

And Keith said, “What?”

And then Adam said, “I’d like my mom to meet you.”

And Keith looked at him and Adam smiled and he put an arm around Keith’s shoulders like he knew exactly what Keith needed, and Keith leaned into him because it was both easy and wonderful to be comforted and loved.)

 

***

 

“...you got Lance a Brandon Sanderson book.”

“A short story, but yes.”

“You hate Sanderson.”

“Lance might not. Besides, I’ve listened to that story—too many times.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Not many people do.”

 

***

 

TAKASHI: call me before you board.

TAKASHI: it’s going to be okay.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, crying: why is the formatting so weird
> 
> i really hope the next part is the last part because this one was...so much longer than i thought it would be.
> 
> part 3: adam leaves for vancouver. keith and lance are ridiculous. hunk suffers. 
> 
> bonus:
> 
> keith, upon finding out that hunk STILL has the heart next to his name in his contacts: alskdfjalsdjfalksdjflaksdjf


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you drain all the fear from me

     When they got back to the apartment, Keith picked up a sleeping Red and suffered Adam going through (and judging) his books. He sat on the bed and half-listened to Adam muttering and rambling and asking to borrow things he probably didn’t have time to read, and Keith thought: _uh_.

    Red wiggled a little in her sleep, soft in his hands, and Keith rubbed absent-mindedly behind her ears. Adam was seated on Keith’s side of the bed, going through the pile of disorganized books Keith always kept nearby, and he looked alien and slightly out of place, with the bundled leftovers of their half-tidied nest on Lance’s side of the bed and just behind Adam.

    Maybe it was that Keith thought he knew every detail of his and Lance’s bed.

    Like: Lance liked squishy, marshmallow pillows that he could sink into, while Keith’s pillows were firmer and easier to prop up against while he read or talked to Lance or listened to Hunk detail his sufferings both at their hands and on his residence floor.

    Like: Lance kept a folded, extra blanket at the end of his side of the bed, just in case it got cold in the middle of the night and Keith wasn’t enough of a heater for him; or, just in case Hunk stumbled into their bedroom while they were both sleeping and needed a blanket.

    Like: Keith sometimes hid things under the pillows—a book, a pack of post-it flags, a highlighter, his or Lance’s cell phone.

    Like: in Lance’s nightstand, because Lance was honestly the better organized of the two of them, they—

    “Don’t go in the drawers,” Keith blurted, sweating. Red squirmed a little more in his hands.

    Adam looked him. Adam blinked once. Twice. Adam smiled. “I’m not stupid,” he said with the slightest flash of teeth.

    “Oh my god,” Keith said.

    “I’m not god, I’m your ambiguous familial relation.”

    “You’re not funny. You’re the least funny person in the world.”

    “No,” Adam sighed and flipped shut a book of short stories Keith was only half-finished. “That would be your brother.”

    Keith decided he was going to tell Shiro that Adam had been bad-mouthing him—and in front of Red, too.

    “You’re intrusive.”

    “You yelled at me,” Adam retorted, and again there was that small flash of teeth. “I get to snoop.”

    “I didn’t _yell_.”

    Adam hummed and returned the book to Keith’s pile. Keith, safe by the door, watched Adam tap the spines of the books, then the surface of Keith’s nightstand. He looked around the room once, then slapped his hands to his knees and huffed out a sigh.

    Keith squinted at him. Red sighed. “What?”

    Adam drummed his fingers once against his knees and then twisted just enough to look at Keith with a frown. “Am I snooping too much?”

    Keith blinked. “You’re just being yourself.”

    “I don’t know how to take that.”

    “What are you looking for?”

    “Nothing.” Adam shrugged and stood and stretched. He straightened his glasses. “I just wanted to see.”

    Keith considered this.

    “You dote on that hamster.”

    “She’s a good hamster.”

    Adam came close and they looked down at Red together. She was sleeping soundly, inflating and deflating and her fur dancing as she breathed.

    “I’m glad that Lance is the sort of boy who will rescue a hamster,” Adam said eventually, and it sounded even more like approval than Adam outright saying: “I like him.”

    So Keith smiled. “Me too.”

    And it felt alright to have Adam snooping around his and Lance’s bedroom, though for all his posturing the most Adam did was poke through Keith’s books and check to see if his sweaters still fit.

    Shiro, if he had been there, would have called it: fretting.

    Lance texted to say he was on his way back, and Keith put Red back into her home and watched her shuffle into her cave to go back to sleep. When he stood, Adam had taken his place near the door and was looking at him.

    Just. Looking.

    “What?”

    “Nothing,” Adam said with a slight shake of his head. “Just—come here.”

    “I’m suspicious.”

    “As you should be,” Adam said, a little loftily, but he waved his hands and said again: “Come here.”

    Keith wiped his hamster hands on his shirt, which earned him an eye roll, but he made his way back to Adam and let Adam pull him into a hug: tight, warm, and familiar. He knew the way Adam smelled, just as well as he knew how Lance or Shiro or Hunk or Red smelled. He knew comfort, and he knew the slow melt of his bones when Adam crushed him close—and Adam always crushed him close, like he was afraid to let go.

    Keith was slow to return the hug but when he did, Adam laughed in his ear and Keith smiled into his shoulder.

    “Thank you for coming to meet Lance,” Keith said eventually, almost in a mumble.

    Adam squeezed him impossibly tighter and just said: “I love you, Keith.”

 

    ***

 

    By the time Lance arrived, Keith was a little afraid that he _had_ yelled at Adam.

    Adam was a little—twitchy.

    No, not twitchy. Nervous? Anxious? Overexcited?

    Or just—quiet. But a quiet sort of—quiet. Keith couldn’t entirely put his finger on it. Adam was just a little bit more subdued, a little bit less loud, and he seemed to hunch—just a little. He radiated a sour sort of energy that Keith knew from late nights and arguments with Shiro and arguments with Keith himself and days when Adam tried and failed to call his mother.

    Lance didn’t notice. Keith didn’t bring attention to it.

    And Adam threw the car keys at him.

    “You drive,” Adam sighed while Keith fumbled the keys. A mountain charm hung from the keychain: a gift from an overager, thirteen-year-old Keith, now worn and kind of sharp. “I’ll watch from the back.”

    Lance tried to argue. Lance failed. Lance was good like that.

    Keith just shrugged.

    It was starting to cool down when they got back outside. The sun was a little less warm and a little less bright, and a slight wind was starting to blow a chill into Keith’s sleeves and down the collar of his coat. Adam put his little suitcase into the trunk of the car and Keith started to shuffle his way to the driver’s side door, and then Lance caught his arm and caught Keith with his eyes.

    God, Lance was handsome. Keith wanted to trace the freckles on his cheeks and the line of his jaw and toy with his messy hair.

    “Are you okay?” Lance asked, soft and quick.

    And Keith thought, briefly, of lying.

    He shrugged instead. “Probably,” he muttered.

    Lance blinked at him once, twice. “I was thinking,” he said while Adam did a verbal inventory of his pockets (“I.D., yup. Boarding pass, yup. Coffee card, yup—”).

    “Yeah?”

    Lance frowned and looked away briefly. “We should talk, later.” He paused. “You know?”

    And the sudden, mounting, heavy dread in Keith’s belly made him say: “No?”

    “Time to go, lovebirds,” Adam said as he closed the trunk.

    Lance let go of Keith’s arm and Keith stumbled onto the road.

    He was hot, now, in his coat and in the cooling afternoon sun. He felt heavy as he sat and adjusted the seat and tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. He felt sweaty and off-center glancing behind him to watch Adam settle and buckle himself in and frown at his phone with that distracted, crooked expression that told Keith _exactly_ who he was talking too. And he felt disoriented and uncertain he should be driving when he looked at Lance sitting next to him, with his disheveled hair and his bright, bright eyes.

    Keith often thought he could lose himself in Lance’s eyes. Just fade away.

    Lance was frowning, and Keith’s panic—or his frustration, or his impatience, or his—was rising, and then Lance reached out and touched his wrist and Keith stilled.

    “I’m good,” he said quietly, and Lance nodded and pulled his hand back and Keith knew that he wasn’t lying.

    Adam had said not to be afraid.

    Keith glanced back again and watched Adam type furiously at his phone, slightly hunched over it.

    “Tell Shiro we’re leaving now,” Keith said, as casually as he could muster.

    Lance gave him a Look, but he was smiling a little so Keith didn’t take it to heart.

    Adam kicked the back of his chair.

    “It’s _your_ car.”

    “Onwards, ridiculous boy,” Adam grumbled without looking up from his phone.

 

    ***

 

    (“Do you like him?”

    “What?”

    “David. Do you like him?”

    “Who—Keith. It’s four in the—”

    “The boyfriend. Shiro! Do you like him?”

    “Leave me alone. Leave Adam alone. Leave David alone.”

    And it turned out Shiro was still very strong and had no trouble dragging Keith into the bed next to him and forcing him to go back to sleep by pulling the blankets over his head.

    “I don’t like him,” Keith tried to insist, but Shiro hushed him and was snoring a minute later. Keith pulled Shiro’s blankets from his face and stared at the ceiling and repeated: “I don’t like him.”

    And maybe the truth was that he did like David, with his big smile and his easy way of making Adam laugh, and the patience he gave to Adam’s weirdness and the ease with which he just accepted that Keith and Shiro were a part of Adam’s life.

    And maybe even more true was that he was scared of liking David, because he was so much like Shiro and so little like Shiro, and it felt like a closing door.

    And maybe Keith had grand, romantic ideas about Shiro bursting into Adam’s apartment and making a passionate confession and them falling into each other’s arms, and those ideas were definitely all Adam’s fault because wasn’t _he_ the one who gave Keith all these books?

David and Adam were together for a little over a year and then David moved away and Keith was both pleased and sad. And the day David left, Shiro and Adam drank three bottles of wine and Keith came home from the Holts to Adam grunting through a hangover and thanking Keith when he draped a blanket over his shoulders.

And maybe that felt like progress, or something like it.)

 

    ***

   

    The traffic at the arrivals concourse was slightly mad.

    They triple-checked Adam’s flight number, and Keith did two loops before he felt comfortable actually pulling over and letting Adam throw himself from the car. Keith watched Adam take his suitcase from the trunk and studied the grimace on his face and then Lance poked him, hard, in the arm and said: “I’ll watch the car, you weirdo.”

    And then Keith threw himself out of the car and Lance leaned out the window to shout: “Have a great flight!”

    Adam thanked him and then turned to Keith with an expectant smile on his face and a slight spread of his arms which made Keith think he was in for another hug.

    So Keith blurted: “I’ll come in with you.”

    “Yeah! I’ll keep the car safe,” Lance called from behind him.

    “I can probably walk myself into the airport,” Adam said, so Keith seized hold of his suitcase and stormed through the doors without him.

    Adam followed a moment later, and then they were in the gleaming white chill of the airport and Adam was squinting at his boarding pass.

    “Which way?” Keith asked, wiping the sweaty palm of his free hand on his coat.

    Adam tried to wrestle the suitcase handle from him and Keith pulled away.

    “I don’t know,” Adam muttered. “Isn’t this _your_ airport?”

    “Yeah, ‘cause I fly lots of places.” Keith grimaced. “Maybe Lance should have come with you instead.”

    “Don’t torture your boyfriend.” Adam shoved his boarding pass into a pocket and ignored Keith’s rude gesture. “I’ll figure it out. Go back to the car and save me from a ticket.”

    “Lance is looking after it.”

    Adam raised his eyebrows. Keith glared.

    “Keith,” Adam said.

    “Adam,” Keith replied.

    “I can handle an airport, kiddo,” Adam said, and held out his hand. It took a moment for Keith to realize what he wanted, and then he reluctantly handed over the suitcase. “Still, I’m touched that you think I need supervision.”

    “You do need supervision.”

    “Be careful with my car. Spare key’s on the counter.”

    “Yeah, yeah. I’m a good driver, you know.”

    And Adam smiled and it looked, for a moment, like he was going to reach for Keith again but then he stalled and just said: “I do know.”

    The tightness returned to Keith’s throat. He didn’t bother trying to swallow it down.

    “Have a good flight,” Keith managed. “I hope Vancouver sucks.”

    “It won’t,” Adam said with laughter under his voice. “I’ll see you in a few days.”

    “Yeah. We’ll be here.”

    Adam made like he was going to reach for Keith again, but didn’t, and Keith wished that he could burrow into Adam and pretend that they were both going home.

    “Okay,” Adam said eventually. “I’m off.”

    He began to turn away, and it took him a moment to look away from Keith, and the thing in Keith’s throat grew, and grew, and grew.

    “Adam,” he said around it. Adam paused, his head tilting. And Keith said: “I love you, too.”

    Adam smiled.

 

    ***

 

    Keith watched him for as long as he could.

    The bright red of the suitcase helped.

    And then he was gone. And it felt horribly final.

 

    ***

 

    Lance was leaning out the window when Keith re-emerged, his arms folded and his head tilted. He smiled at Keith, but didn’t move, and Keith gave himself a moment to just stand in front of Lance and take in the sight of him.

    “Hey,” Lance said eventually.

    “Hey.”

    And that was enough to get Keith moving again.

 

    ***

 

    Keith believed that love was the one thing that lasted.

    He knew he would always love his dad, no matter how many years went by or how many memories faded.

    He knew he would always love Shiro, no matter where he went for school or how his world grew.

    He knew he would always love Adam, no matter where Adam ran or who he brought into their lives.

    And he knew, pulling into traffic with Lance quiet next to him, that he would love Lance for all of his days, no matter how old they both got or how tired their hearts became.

 

    ***

 

    And the love Keith had for Lance felt a little like fire.

    He would keep it burning.

    He could do that.

 

    ***

 

    They were quiet for a while. Keith tried to focus on the road, on the feel of the steering wheel, on the sound of Lance breathing next to him, on the roar of the world outside—but the tightness in his throat was heavy, and painful, and he realized—finally, and slowly—what it was.

    “Lance,” he said eventually as they drove back into the city proper.

    “Yeah?”

    “I think—“ he broke off. He chewed the inside of his cheek.

    “Keith?”

    “I need to pull over.”

    “Okay.”

    It took a while to find somewhere he felt comfortable stopping. Lance put his hand on Keith’s knee and they kept going in their stormy silence. And Keith fought not to cry.

    Part of him didn’t want to cry in front of Lance. It seemed like too much. It felt like a betrayal, but he wasn’t sure of what or of whom. Part of him wanted to crawl into Lance’s arms and bury his face against Lance’s neck and wait for it to pass.

    He pulled into a hotel parking lot, stopping at the very edges of it and staring, just for a moment, at a mound of snow.

    “Keith,” Lance said again. “Are you okay?”

    Keith swallowed. The thing in his throat stung. He dropped his head to the steering wheel and took several shuddering breaths. No tears came, just more pain in his throat that began to extend into his chest, creeping and shifting and spreading.

    “Keith—”

    Lance’s hands were on his shoulder, his side, batting at him until he finally lifted his head and turned enough for Lance to catch his face, lifting him so the world seemed suddenly bright, to Keith, and suddenly warm with Lance’s hand on his face and his nose throbbing.

    “It’s okay,” Lance said, his thumbs brushing over Keith’s cheekbones. “We’ll get through this.”

    Keith believed him.

    It didn’t ease the ache, exactly, but it was wonderful to lean into Lance’s touch and let the sound of Lance’s voice wash over him. He tried to remember to breathe.

    “I’m here,” Lance said, and Keith tried to nod. “We’re here together.”

    “I’m okay,” Keith mumbled, blinking rapidly. Lance’s hands felt melted into his skin, like he was only upright and steady because Lance was. “I think—I’m okay.”

    “Yeah,” Lance agreed with another brush of his thumbs. Keith could see his smile. “You’re great. You’re perfect.”

    That made Keith want to cry and laugh all at once, so he settled for a grunt and tried to pull away but Lance had him, tight and warm.

    “Lance,” he tried.

    “Keith,” Lance replied, light and sweet, and he kissed Keith.

    Light and sweet.

    Barely a kiss, just a quick meeting of their lips that sent a jolt down Keith’s spine and into his stomach, drowning away the spreading tightness from his throat.

    “Keith,” Lance said, and he kissed Keith again and Keith was collapsing in on himself, his hands finally falling away from the steering wheel. “Keith.”

    Lance, he thought. I’m okay, he thought.

    “He’s going to come back,” Lance said against his lips. Another kiss. Harder now. Longer. “He’ll come back and we’ll be here to greet him.”

    “Yeah,” Keith breathed out.

    “I’m going to love you forever,” Lance said, and Keith’s heart soared and screamed and danced in his chest. “I’m going to love you every day, forever.”

    “Yeah.”

    “We’re a team now, you and me.”

    “Yeah.”

    “I want to make rules for forever,” Lance said then and he leaned back just a little, so his lips were so close and his breath was so warm and Keith was having trouble thinking around it all. “No—promises.”

    “Promises,” Keith echoed.

    Lance’s hands slipped from his face and his arms wound around Keith’s neck and pulled Keith closer. Keith twisted, his hands catching hold of Lance’s coat. Lance kissed him again, like he was coaxing Keith back to the real world but Keith was crashing into Lance, instead.

    “Promises,” Lance insisted.

    Keith wanted to promise him everything. He wanted to drag Lance tight against him, and taste the skin of his throat, and feel the length of his back and the heat of his voice against Keith’s ear.

    The pain in his throat was gone, released to the air or sucked into Lance’s chest.

    “Lance—” he started, and Lance sighed against him and the centre console was a wedge between them. “I want to give you forever.”

    “We’ll make it,” Lance muttered. “We’ll make it together.”

    Forever, Keith thought. They could work on forever. They could make promises, together.

    He pushed Lance back and Lance groaned, his arms loosening and his lips twisted into a scowl.

    Keith loved him—he loved him, he loved him, he loved him. He couldn’t imagine a life, a world, without Lance and their bed and their hamster and their memories. The mugs in their cupboards, the books on their shelves, the sound of Lance’s singing in the mornings. The heady indulgence of Lance’s skin, of Lance’s voice in the night.

    “Hey,” Keith said, and Lance blinked at him. “There’s more room in the back.”

    Lance blinked some more. He leaned a little further back. Keith felt his own lips start to quirk into a sheepish, twitchy smile.

    “That’s ridiculous,” Lance said gravely.

    Keith nodded. “Very silly.”   

    They pulled apart and Keith fumbled for the door and then the cool, late-afternoon air hit his face and he had a split-second to think _wait_ and then they both slammed the doors behind them and Keith froze.

    He heard Lance try the back door. His stomach flipped over. Lance heaved a huge sigh, and then Keith heard him lean heavily against the car.

    “Keith,” Lance said. “Did you—”

    “Yeah,” Keith grumbled and scrubbed a hand over his flushed face. “Yeah.” He turned slowly to peer through the driver’s side window and at the slightly swinging, slightly mocking shape of the mountain keychain, dangling from the keys still in the ignition.

On the other side of the car, Lance tapped his fingers against the window, frowning.

“Keith,” he said again.

“I know.”

“Oh man.”

They both tried the doors, just in case, and the keys glinted mockingly at Keith, locked in Adam’s car.

“I guess that’s what we get,” Lance sighed and turned and leaned back against the car. Keith raised his head and watched Lance shake his fist at the sky. “I just wanted to make out with my boyfriend!”

Keith tried and failed to hide his smile against his coat collar. “Sorry,” he mumbled, stepping around the car.

Lance frowned at him as he approached, but opened his arms so Keith could fall into them, his hands slipping into Lance’s open coat and skirting the hem of Lance’s sweater.

Lance, his hands tangled in Keith’s hair, tilted them so they melted back together in a warm kiss, the growing chill of the afternoon momentarily forgotten.

“How am I supposed to keep up with you?” Lance said softly, his fingers dragging lightly against Keith’s scalp so Keith melted into him with a sigh, feeling heavy and wanted and warm all over.

”You’re doing great,” Keith replied, though he didn’t quite know what he meant. Words were suddenly just a filler, a pause between kisses so they could catch their breath and Keith could summon the concentration he needed to press his palms against the small of Lance’s back, could feel the heat of his skin and the way Lance pushed away from the car just slightly to lean back into Keith.

“What are we going to do?”

”Die, I guess.”

And Lance laughed and threw his head back and Keith took the opportunity to press wet kisses against his neck, until Lance, still laughing, tried to push him away and said through his giggles: “Inappropriate!”

At least they seemed to more or less have the parking lot to themselves.

 

***

 

There’s probably more to say about David.

Like that he bought Keith a beautiful hardcover copy of _The Master and Margarita,_ complete with a touching inscription that Keith had only read once. The book itself now lived at the bottom of Keith’s box of keepsakes, tucked in the corner of his and Lance’s front closet.

Sometimes Keith thought of it and he wondered who he had betrayed and who he had hurt and it didn’t matter how many times Adam promised that it wasn’t his fault and that sometimes lives just go separate directions. Keith tried to remember that “separate directions” bit.

David got married the summer before Keith moved for school. Adam sent him a card and asked Keith if he wanted to sign it and Keith had been paralyzed—

But.

 

***

 

“Why did Adam bring a spare key?” Lance said, and then frowned and kicked at a snow pile. “Did he know this would happen?”

“Probably,” Keith muttered. Keith tapped the side of his head. “Adam knows things.” He paused. “Jerk,” he added thoughtfully.

Lance looked up at him. “I guess that’s a parent skill,” he said, casually like Keith had only ever heard Shiro or Adam be.

“Lance,” Keith said.

Lance just smiled.

Keith leaned back against Adam’s car and wondered, just for a moment, if he was being punished by the heavens for trying to make out with his boyfriend in a borrowed vehicle.

He hoped not.

“We could ask Hunk,” Lance said, kicking at the snow pile some more.

They grimaced at each other.

“We could take the bus home,” Keith said. “Bus back and get the car.”

“That’ll take, literally, hours.”

“We can’t ask Hunk.”

“No, think about it—” Lance turned away from the snowpile and slid his way back to Keith across the slightly icy ground. Keith put out his hands automatically, catching Lance’s, and Lance twisted their fingers together. Their knees bumped and Keith couldn’t help but smile. “Hunk goes to our apartment and gets the key and he comes here and we all go home together. Ta da! It’s a plan.”

“It sounds like a great way for Hunk to yell at us.”

“Oh no,” Lance said. “It sounds like a great way for Hunk to yell at _you_.”

“I’m not calling him.”

“I’m not doing it either.”

“Guess we’re taking the bus.”

“Guess so.”

They had an overexcited thumb wrestle to decide who would call Hunk, and Keith lost.

 

***

 

Hunk was not impressed.

“You did what?”

Keith looked at Lance. Lance covered his eyes.

“Uh,” Keith said. “We locked ourselves out of the car.”

“At a hotel.”

“The hotel,” Keith said, a little bit of panic and shame rising in his gut. “Is unrelated.”

Hunk was quiet.

Keith took the opportunity to add: “It was an accident.”

Lance peeked at him through his fingers. “You’re my hero, Hunk,” he called.

“Tell Lance—” Hunk broke off. He sighed. And then, quick and low, he said: “I think I know _exactly_ what happened.”

“It was an accident,” Keith repeated flatly and tried to ignore the way his cheeks flushed hot and red.

“I’ll be there in—I don’t know, an hour.” Another, enormous, Hunk-flavoured sigh.

“You’re the best, Hunk,” Keith tried.

“You owe me so big, Keith,” Hunk replied. “ _So_ big. For starters, I am keeping the heart next to your name.”

Keith clenched his jaw and didn’t retort and Hunk made a half-pleased sound. Keith assumed Hunk was thinking something along the lines of: _progress_.

“How about pizza?”

“Yeah, that’s on the list of reparations, too. Real pizza. Thick, oozing cheese, pizza.”

“Okay.”

“Is he making demands?” Lance whispered.

Keith waved him away.

“Thanks Hunk,” he said, and then: “Sorry Hunk.”

And Hunk sighed again and said: “You know I’d do anything for you guys.”

And it was sweet, but he also sounded just a little resigned.

“You’re the best,” Keith said again, meaning it a little bit more this time.

 

***

 

It got colder.

They leaned against the passenger side door and peered at the keys, dangling from the ignition, with their foreheads against the window.

Shiro texted to say that Adam had boarded his plane and would be in Vancouver in an hour.

Keith thought it was a little hilarious and very annoying that they wouldn’t be home by the time Adam landed in another city, in another province, in another timezone.

“There’s more room in the back, he says,” Lance muttered.

“There _is_.”

“Yes,” Lance sighed, sounding a little wistful. “There is.”

Maybe Lance thought it was a shame, too.

“I wanted to kiss your ribs,” Keith said, pulling away from the door and letting his shoulders slump.

Lance, still bent towards the window, blinked at him, and then flushed. “You can’t just—say that.”

“What? Why? What did you think I wanted to do?”

“I don’t know—”

“I was going to bite your neck, Lance.”

“Stop it!”

“I was going to make a big mess of your hair.”

“You’re so weird!”

 

***

 

It got even colder and Lance zipped up his coat but shivered next to Keith, their elbows knocking while they stared in silence at the bus stop at the other end of the parking lot. There wasn’t a lot of traffic, but people came and went from the bright lights of the hotel doors. It was just—quiet, with the wind slowly dying and airplanes flying overhead when Keith wasn’t paying attention, and Lance breathing through his nose carefully and slowly.

Keith missed Red, a little.

“Let’s go inside,” Lance muttered, hunching into his coat.

They hooked their arms together and made their way towards the hotel, taking huge steps over little mounds of speckled snow and stepping around trucks with license plates from BC and Alberta and a couple from Saskatchewan and one from Nova Scotia. Lance counted them out loud as they went. Keith waited for Adam’s ghost to reappear at the back of his mind, or Shiro’s voice to prod at his heart, but all he really felt was the chill, the slow fade of the sun, and Lance. Always Lance.

Someone at the front desk raised their head briefly to look at them, but Lance tugged Keith aside and they scurried to couch by one of the windows. Keith could see the back of Adam’s car, like the parking lot had cleared a line just for him, and then a little beyond and to the left he saw the top of the bus shelter. He squished against the arm of the couch and Lance squished in next to him and Keith realized he was colder than he’d first thought, so his fingers prickled and complained as they warmed in his pockets.

He squirmed a hand free and took one of Lance’s and they twisted their fingers together.

“Try not to look suspicious,” Lance whispered.

Keith snorted and Lance laughed against his shoulder and Keith tried to lock the memory of it all away. Lance leaned heavily against him, squeezing his hand, and waiting wasn’t so bad.

The person from the front desk approached with stuttered, shuffling footsteps and hovered at the other end of the couch. Keith looked at their reflection in the window and watched them bite their lip and watched Lance smile.

“Boys,” started the person and seemed to immediately regret, but they carried on which Keith thought was admirable. “Are you waiting for someone?”

Keith turned and Lance pulled away, just slightly. “Yes,” he said.

A quiet moment.

“Okay,” the person said and made their shuffling, nervous way back to the desk.

Keith looked back at the window and Lance huffed another laugh. “It wasn’t a lie,” Keith muttered, and Lance laughed some more.

He couldn’t shake the half-exciting, half-terrifying feeling of being an intruder in a neat and tidy space, but they stayed on the couch together. Warm.

 

***

 

HUNK: traffic is bad

HUNK: just wait for me and try to keep your hands out of each other’s clothes

 

***

 

“Why did he say it like that?” Lance muttered when Keith showed him the messages.

 

***

 

They played chess on Lance’s phone and Keith learned that he found Lance’s thinking face very attractive.

He lost.

Again.

 

***

 

They saw the bus and got up so quickly Lance almost fell over and they both wobbled, still attached like they had forgotten they were two bodies instead of one conglomerate monster.

“Come on,” Keith said, pulling Lance along after him.

Lance waved goodbye to the front desk.

“He’s going to yell at us,” Lance said when they were outside and making their slippery way back towards the car. “He’s going to rant and rave and yell at us.”

“He won’t yell,” Keith replied, but he didn’t entirely believe himself.

They got to the bus stop just as the bus itself pulled away with a roar, leaving behind a hunched and sleepy-looking Hunk.

Keith and Lance stopped, still holding hands and Lance giving Hunk a hopeful, placating smile.

Hunk didn’t say anything at first. He looked puffy in his winter coat, with his hands shoved in his pockets and a scarf he’d stolen from Keith wound loosely around his neck. He looked at Keith, and then he looked at Lance, and then he looked back at Keith.

“I’ve spent a literal hour on a bus,” Hunk said eventually. “On a bus route I don’t know, staring out a window at a part of this stupid city I don’t know, all because my two supposed best friends literally cannot control themselves.” He paused.  “I am going to rant.”

“Fair,” Lance said.

“Okay,” Keith said.

 

***

 

Hunk made Lance sit in the back. Lance sprawled out and ignored when Keith yelled for him to buckle up.

Hunk—

Well.

“You really can’t even make a half hour drive home without trying to jump each other? It’s that hard for you guys?”

It obviously, visibly, physically hurt Lance not to comment, but Keith was very proud of his twitchy silence.

“I had a bad feeling the _moment_ you called because we all know _Keith never makes a phone call_ unless he’s like, pining for his stupid boyfriend—I don’t mean that Lance; you’re not stupid—but yeah, pining or whatever—a phone call! An actual phone call! I thought: gee, what shenanigans could Keith and Lance be up to that led to Keith actually calling me? You are so freaking lucky that you are one of, like, seven people in the world who I would actually pick up the phone for. Surprise! It’s Keith and Lance shenanigans! It’s always Keith and Lance shenanigans. Always! Don’t you guys get tired? I get tired. I’m tired all the time. And this! This is why I will never live with you two. Never ever. 24/7 it’ll be ‘oh Hunk I lost another thumb wrestle to Lance because I was lost in his pretty blue eyes’ or whatever it is that day. You are so lucky I love you both! You are _so lucky_ that somehow I am a sucker for your—your—shenanigans!”

Keith’s job was mostly to say “Yes, Hunk,” and “Sorry, Hunk,” and the occasional “I love you, Hunk.”

And Lance kept repeating under his breath: “shenanigans.”

 

***

 

SHIRO: adam told me to tell you that he’s landed safely and vancouver, i quote, “already doesn’t suck” which begs the questions: what did you say to him and do you regret it

 

***

 

“Okay, I’m good,” Hunk said when Keith parked a block away from the apartment.

“Okay, I’m good,” Hunk said again when they started walking towards Keith and Lance’s building.

“No really. I’m good,” Hunk said _again_ , when Lance fumbled the door open and they trooped their way to the lobby and made their way up the stairs in their squeaky shoes. “I think I’m done. I think I’m over it.”

“I’ll get on the pizza,” Keith said, and he didn’t believe Hunk for a single second.

So they ordered pizza, and neither Lance nor Keith complained about there being more pizza in their lives, and Hunk sat at the kitchen table and stewed and Lance made him a whole pot of the fruity-floral tea and Keith found some leftover candy from Halloween that Hunk gnawed on while they waited for the pizza to arrive.

Hunk was quiet for a while. Keith and Lance sat across the table from him, Keith leaned back in his seat and Lance leaned against the table with his chin in his hands. Hunk chewed his candy, he sniffed his tea, and he looked at them.

“Go on,” Lance said eventually.

Hunk chewed some more. He swallowed. “You’re just really lucky Adam left you the key,” he said. “Okay! For real! I’m done.”

“We’re also really lucky you came to get us,” Lance said easily, beaming at Hunk. “You saved us, Hunk!”

“Don’t try and flatter me, Lance. It doesn’t work.”

Except that it usually did.

Pizza came and the three of them ate more than they should and Hunk slowly started to calm down again.

Keith was glad Hunk came to help them. He didn’t know how to express it, but he was glad—and he was glad that he had never doubted that Hunk would bring the key and sit in their kitchen and grouchily eat pizza with them. He nibbled at a crust and he watched Hunk mutter to his tea and he listened to Lance say nice things to Hunk and Keith thought that this was very much like home.

They piled onto the couch and Hunk wedged himself between Lance and Keith because he apparently didn’t trust them (fair) and they finished the pizza and they watched bits and pieces of every Marvel movie on Netflix and Keith found himself wishing, as he leaned against Hunk and passed Lance a blanket, that Adam and Shiro could have something like this—even if it meant they had to be apart.

And maybe that hurt most of all, even as his second (his third, his newest) family cocooned him in warmth.

 

***

 

SHIRO: that tells me nothing

 

***

 

TAKASHI: he has told me nothing

 

***

 

Keith woke up with Hunk snoring into his back and Lance trying and failing to slip unnoticed from the bed.

Lance flashed him a smile and made a shushing sound and Keith tried to sit up and found that Hunk’s arm over his chest was too heavy and the bed was too comfortable to leave.

“Where’re you going?” he muttered, trying to blink sleep from his eyes.

“Run,” Lance whispered.

“It’s slippery.”

“It’s always slippery.” Lance padded around the bed and came to lean over him, his hair wild and his smile bright. Keith couldn’t help but smile back at him. “I’m going to go the track. Don’t worry.”

So Keith didn’t. Lance bent and kissed Keith once, then patted Hunk’s arm, and Keith fell slowly back to sleep.

 

***

 

His panic, his fear, the painful lump in his throat—it all felt far away when he finally dragged Hunk out of bed. Red scurried out to see them, seemed satisfied, and waddled away. Hunk tried to flop back into the bed and Keith pushed him upright. And waiting for him on his phone was a message from Adam with pictures of the snow-dusted UBC campus, with water just out of sight and the vague ghost of the mountains beyond it.

Keith supposed that that was pretty nice.

“How was the visit?” Hunk asked around a yawn. He had returned to the edge of the bed but he was sitting up so Keith allowed it. “Did Adam like Lance?”

Everyone liked Lance.

“Yeah,” Keith said. “I think it was good.”

Hunk blinked at him, blinked the sleep from his eyes, and blinked some more. “Are you okay?”

Keith considered this. He considered himself. He imagined running his fingers over the ragged seams of his soul and thought that he was patched nicely.

“Yeah,” he said. “Breakfast?”

“Sure.”

“I’m thinking—eggs.”

“Yeah. Okay. I’m going to say this once and that’s it: you and Lance have a problem.”

Keith smiled and leaned against their dresser and watched Hunk rub at his eyes and heave a sigh as he reluctantly woke himself up. He imagined Adam in that spot, just the day before, flipping through his books.

“Hunk,” he said.

Hunk grunted.

And Keith said as much as he could which felt fearfully close to nothing at all: “Come meet Adam, next time.”

Hunk lowered his hands. He frowned. “Okay,” he said eventually.

And Keith’s smile grew.

“And Shiro.”

“Don’t stress me out in the morning!”

 

***

 

“What—” Lance started, coming back flushed and sweaty and pleased.

And Hunk and Keith shushed him so they could listen to Gordon Ramsay explain scrambled eggs to them for the nth time.

“Do we have enough eggs?” Keith muttered.

“Quiet,” Hunk said.

“I’m going to go shower,” Lance sighed.

 

***

 

“You’d think,” Hunk said, rewinding the YouTube video. “I’d know how to make scrambled-freaking-eggs.”

“Are you guys _still_ at that?”

“Go away, Lance.”

 

***

 

They ate breakfast and watched MasterChef and Lance made fun of the drama of it all and Hunk and Keith did their best to ignore him.

Lance made this difficult by being both funny and charming so Keith stole some of his eggs and drank all of his coffee but Lance ate all of his mushrooms so it all—balanced somewhere.

As it usually did.

 

***

 

Keith knew, about the same time Lance did, and just before Hunk did, that Hunk was getting twitchy and tired. It helped that the three of them had made the intentional decision to stay home, like Hunk and Lance knew Keith needed a little bit of rest and love, but— Hunk, who was both social and shy, with his wide smiles and his generous heart, who got tired even with and of them, started to droop a little. Like he hadn’t slept enough, or drank enough water, or was just—done.

Keith never quite knew what to do when this happened.

But Lance, who remained the Hunk-expert of the two of them, usually did.

The episode finished and Hunk leaned heavily against the table and squinted at Keith’s laptop and Lance reached over and closed the stream tab before the next episode could start.

Hunk scowled at him.

“Hunk, my main guy, my greatest dude—”

“Lance.”

Keith looked away so neither of them could see him smile.

“You gotta go so I can jump my boyfriend.”

Hunk opened his mouth to retort and then it seemed to click, finally, for him, and Lance beamed.

“Fine,” Hunk said. “Fine!”

They shoved a travel mug of tea into his hands and filled his pockets with his candies and Hunk hugged Keith so tight he thought he might throw up, and then they watched Hunk make his way down the street and away from them. The view was always perfect from their kitchen window, and it was always nice to lean over the sink with Lance and keep an eye on Hunk for as long as they could.

And then they were alone, and it felt to Keith like they hadn’t been alone in a long time, though the car fiasco and the nest event had been just the day before.

When Hunk was out of sight, Lance leaned over and kissed Keith’s cheek and they turned away from the window together.

“I’ll start the dishes,” Lance said.

“I’ll check on Red,” Keith said.

He felt very tall, wandering down their little hallway and filling up Red’s water bottle and replacing it with her twitching her little hamster nose up at him. He stuck out a finger and she sniffed it and he rubbed between her ears and he watched to make sure the water was to her taste and maybe because he liked the little wiggle she did when she drank, and then he stood and stretched.

He could the clank and clatter of their breakfast dishes in the sink.

He made their bed, his hands smoothing over the duvet cover. Pillows, straightened. Extra blankets, folded. His books—a little straighter. Red returned to her cave and then Keith was stuck, with his hands on Lance’s pillows and his ears straining to hear the soft sound of Lance humming to himself in the kitchen. He dragged his fingers over the duvet again, catching little wrinkles and waves of the dark blue fabric. It all very soft, in that moment, very real and very soothing. If he closed the blinds, the room would seem homey and quiet and calm and the day would fade away like it had never started.

So he closed the blinds.

When he turned around again the room was darker, and it felt neat and strangely sweet in its emptiness. He didn’t see Adam, now, and he didn’t see Hunk, or Lance, or himself, and even Red was tucked away and out of sight—like they had all left and the room was by itself, just waiting for them to come back. Keith felt his pulse in his neck and he took long breaths and he wondered if the strain from the day before would come back, if he’d feel it in his fingers and his toes and his chest and in that tightness in his throat. He wondered if he’d cry today, if he’d cry when he returned to the kitchen and found Lance at the sink like he imagined Lance in the night.

But then he was sure he would not, and Keith let out a long breath and he rolled his shoulders and he felt his healing nose and he was sure he’d be alright. He was sure that everything would be alright. He was sure that he’d find Lance in the kitchen with a song on his lips and stars in his eyes and love in his laughter. And Keith wasn’t afraid, and he wasn’t sure if it was Adam’s influence or Lance’s or Shiro’s or Hunk’s or just his own strength, but he was sure it didn’t matter.

He left the bedroom and made his slow way back to the kitchen, relishing in the sound of Lance—living and well and happy—and relishing in the leftover smell of their breakfast—with his own laughter in his ears and the smell of Hunk’s mastery of the scrambled egg. Keith paused at the entrance to the kitchen, steadying himself with a hand against the wall, and the feel of it was loud and soothing all at once, and he thought there was a clarity to the world that he wasn’t sure he had noticed before. It might have been peace.

Lance was at the sink, his back to Keith, and Keith could see the shift of his shoulder blades as he moved and hear, as though from far away, the mismatched hum of whatever music flitted through Lance’s mind from moment to moment. He loved the shape and colour of Lance’s elbows, and he loved the shift of Lance’s t-shirt sleeves against his upper arms, and he loved the line of Lance’s neck and the spot where his neck became his back became all of him where Keith loved to kiss and Lance loved to be kissed. Keith tried to savor the moment, even thought of stealing away for his camera just to capture Lance, like this, in a polaroid, but impatience won out and he pushed himself into the kitchen.

Two steps.

“Lance,” he said.

Lance twisted to look at Keith, with his smile wide and his hands sudsy and dripping into the sink. “What’s up?”

Keith trailed his fingers over the back of one of their chairs, all of which already seemed so worn and so familiar and so homey. He thought of their bedroom, dim and warm—while the kitchen was full of late-Winter/early-Spring sunlight, with all its clarity and chill.

“Come back to bed with me,” he said.

And Lance blinked, with his hands still poised over the sink and his fingers looking long and delicate and strong all at once, and his t-shirt pulling against him just right, so he seemed perfect, and lively, and wonderful.

Keith wondered when they had started to grow up.

“Oh,” Lance said eventually.

“Lance,” Keith said, prompting and slow. He wanted to take those two remaining steps and sweep his hands over Lance’s shoulders. He wanted to take the little dry towel they kept nearby and wipe each of Lance’s fingers clean, trace the shape of his hands and taste the feel of his skin where his pulse thrummed at his wrists. He wanted to push his hands through Lance’s hair, and back Lance against the edge of the counter until his back bowed towards Keith, and kiss him until they both fainted or the world ended.

But he knew, somehow, to wait, with his fingers resting lightly against the cheer and the roar of his love in his veins.

Lance looked away and reached for the towel and wiped his hands clean, careful and graceful and so slow, buying time so the fluster Keith could see in the tremble of his fingers, in the twitch of his lips, in the heat of his cheeks—buying time so the fluster could die. He tossed the towel away.

And Keith continued to wait.

And Lance finally—finally—looked back at him and there were the stars, the sky, the sea. He seemed like so much to Keith, in that moment and in their kitchen, with everyone else gone and their hamster fast asleep and their bed just screaming for them to fall into it.

Keith forced himself to blink.

“Why am I still afraid?” Lance said, or muttered, but he didn’t look away again and Keith thought, again: _progress p_ , and he felt it in his bones.

“Are you?”

“I think so.”

Keith smiled. “Then, probably because you know me.”

Lance’s smile returned, small and warm and making his eyes seem impossibly brighter, and Keith wanted to push him onto their bed, he wanted to see Lance lounging against their pillows, he wanted the dark of their sheets beneath them both.

“I guess I do.”

Keith lifted his hand from the chair and held it out and he waited, and he told himself just a little, just for Lance. “Come on.”

And Lance didn’t make him wait much beyond that, and he took Keith’s hand and held on tight and maybe—maybe—they ran a little to their bedroom.

 

***

 

“We’ve still got to talk,” Lance murmured and pressed Keith hard against their closed bedroom door. “We’ve still got promises to make.”

“So many promises,” Keith agreed.

 

***

 

( _“So I can get married?”_

 _“Yes._ Yes. _And have kids and start a family—“_ )

 

***

 

So many promises.

 

***

 

Somewhere along the way, the universe apparently decided to do Keith a solid and shine a light on what he knew—like he knew nothing else—was the love of his life. Keith didn’t know what he had done to deserve this, with Lance, with their home and with Hunk and with every single thing that made up their lives. He didn’t know what he had suffered to deserve this.

Maybe the balance came with the way his love scorched his insides and left little but Lance in its wake, like the universe had decided that Keith could have this but it would consume him until all he was was a husk with Lance’s name and Lance’s voice and Lance’s eyes scratched into his skin.

It seemed, to Keith, like a fine deal.

He thought he’d take any pain for this, for the way Lance trembled in his arms and looked beautiful against the familiar warmth of their bed and how the darkness of their bedroom made everything else fade far, far away.

He was so often in awe of the way Lance could whisper his name like a chant, at the way Lance clutched at his shoulders or gripped his hands. It was never enough to tell Lance how good he made Keith feel, or how Keith loved the drag of Lance’s nails against his skin.

Promises.

“Sweetheart, look at me,” Keith said, the sound of his own voice surprising him. “Lance—”

And he thought that Lance was less afraid than either of them knew because Lance looked at him and he shook Keith to his core.

“I love you,” Lance said and Keith only had a moment to breathe it in before Lance dragged him down, with a hand in Keith’s hair and an arm wrapped around his shoulders.

He couldn’t tell where he ended and Lance began. He knew it didn’t matter.

 

***

 

“No running.”

“No running.”

“And we talk. We always talk.”

“Yes.”

“And we make room for each other.”

“Yes.”

“And if we do run—”

“We won’t.”

“—we always come back.”

 

***

 

They slept most of the day away. Or, Keith did, pressed close to Lance.

Lance slipped away long enough to collect his notes, his heavy textbooks, a granola bar, and he dragged his fingers through Keith’s hair until Keith fell back asleep and didn’t wake him.

Keith didn’t dream. He woke intermittently, like his brain needed a reminder that Lance was there and he really did smell that good, but exhaustion seemed to be leaking out of him and away. And Lance’s touch was so nice—warm, and comforting, and loving.

They dragged themselves to the shower, eventually, and at first it was enough just to “help” Lance with his hair and listen to Lance’s laughter, but then it was so much better to press Lance into the wall and drag his teeth along Lance’s neck until Lance shivered and whispered his name.

They ate the leftover pizza, old and new.

Lance said: “No more pizza.”

Keith thought that was ridiculous.

It was dark when they finished the dishes together, but warm so they had the kitchen window open still.

“I think I slept too much today,” Lance said as they crawled back into bed, automatically sliding close together and tangling their limbs. Lance hummed and Keith nuzzled against his neck. “Maybe I’ll listen to that book your affer bought me.”

“Christ,” Keith muttered without bite.

He was asleep again before the narration had started, but he was surprised to find Lance fast asleep and snoring in his arms when the climax of the story woke him.

 

***

 

No, no dreams.

Not of Thanksgiving, or Lethbridge, or home. Not of Lance in their kitchen alone, or Hunk walking home, or eggs in the pan. Not of Red, or Adam, or Shiro. Not of mountains, or oceans, or rivers.

It was a restful sort of emptiness, and perhaps exactly what Keith needed.

 

***

 

Keith’s alarm woke him for morning practice and he struggled to untangle himself from Lance and then Lance was dragging him back and wrapping his legs around him and Keith was both powerless and pliable.

“You’re sick,” Lance mumbled against his lips.

“What?”

“You’re _sick_ ,” Lance repeated.

“Oh. _Oh_.”

 

***

 

Adam sent pictures of food, and more of the campus, and of a museum he visited. He sent one a blurry picture of the Olympic torch, and he sent a blurrier picture of his own face with a clear and gorgeous backdrop of restless ocean. He said very little.

He said almost nothing.

“It’s okay,” Lance said, like he knew when Keith’s anxiety was starting to rise again. “It’s going to be okay.”

Maybe.

Keith chose to believe him.

 

***

 

They made plans to take advantage of their weekend with Adam’s car. Buy groceries. Take Hunk to buy groceries. Visit the mountains, maybe. See a movie that Hunk could eat popcorn through, maybe. Just—drive.

They discussed these plans in bed, wrapped up together, until Lance’s neck started to hurt so they made lunch and they cuddled on the couch and watched movies and it was difficult, perhaps impossible, for Keith to keep his hands to himself.

Lance didn’t complain.

They did get Hunk and they did drive to a Vietnamese restaurant on the opposite end of the city and Keith was overjoyed to see shredded pork on the menu and Hunk was just glad they got to visit the place without spending hours on transit and Lance ate a shocking amount.

And when they got home, Lance made a valiant effort to make it to, at least, the middle of the audiobook and failed spectacularly, passing out in Keith’s arms and waking briefly only to beg Keith not to tell Adam.

 

***

 

And these are the things that make us believe that love lasts forever

 

***

 

TAKASHI: when are you coming home?

 

***

 

THE BOY: when do you land?

THE BOY: you’re still gonna stay the night ya?

THE BOY: we can go for dinner

 

***

 

HUNK: yes!!! reconcile with your AFR!!! over food!!!

 

***

 

SHIRO: i don’t think he’s mad

SHIRO: dinner’s a great idea

SHIRO: and lance will be less nervous probably

SHIRO: yes?

 

***

 

    All at once, it was Sunday.

    And Keith woke and stared at the ceiling well before his alarm went off.

    And Lance woke a little after and rolled over to kiss Keith’s shoulder and say: “Are you okay?”

    And Keith knew he was.

 

    ***

 

    On the drive to the airport that afternoon, Lance kept his hand on Keith’s knee and tried to remember at least a little of the audiobook.

    “Just tell him you haven’t listened to it yet.”

    “Ugh.”

    They got to the airport early and parked and scoffed at parking costs and made their slow way to the arrivals terminal with their hands clasped tightly together. It was different to step into the airport with Lance. It felt a little like a lurch in Keith’s gut, like the shift in their relationship was suddenly—more pronounced.

    And there had been a shift, and it made thoughts and ideas and daydreams rise in Keith, balloon in his chest, race through his mind.

    They sat and watched planes come and go and held on tight to each other.

    “We should go somewhere,” Lance said thoughtfully, one leg bouncing.

    Keith looked at him. The lurch returned. Anticipation, maybe. “Yeah?”

    “Yeah. Like—” Lance paused. “Disneyland.”

    “Yikes.”

    “You say ‘yikes’ but I think you mean ‘yes.’”

    Keith tried and failed to hide his smile. “All in good time,” he said with feigned wisdom, for both himself and Lance.

    Lance rolled his eyes but smiled and Keith started to see their future laid out in steady steps and late night kisses and lazy mornings and so many promises.

 

    ***

 

    But something was off when Adam emerged by the baggage claim. Keith knew it before Adam was even close enough to touch, or to hug, or to talk to.

    “Keith?” Lance said next to him.

    Keith’s voice died in his throat as Adam came closer, tugging his little suitcase along and looking both like himself and not at all like the Adam Keith knew. He was smiling a small, half-finished sort of smile—distracted, or stilted, or—something that Keith couldn’t quite understand. And he looked tired, but restless, and Keith tried to remember what it felt like to be on a plane like that could explain everything—

    “Keith,” Adam said, and Keith’s name felt weighty—both greeting and farewell in one.

    “What is it?” he said.

    Lance touched his elbow, looking between them.

    Adam hummed. He looked away. He looked back. The smile remained. “I know we had plans—”

    Maybe that was it, then. Maybe that was how he lost Adam. Maybe this was how he pushed Adam far away—

    But Keith knew at the core of his being that that wasn’t true.

    So he opened his mouth. He closed. He tilted his head.

    “It’s okay,” he said. “If you’re tired. If you need to go.”

    “Yeah,” Adam said after a pause. “Let’s get you two home and then—yeah.”

    There was the tightness in his throat, the dryness in his mouth, the roiling in his stomach, but Keith needed to be sure: “You need to go.”

    “Yeah,” Adam said again. And then: “I need to go.”

    And Keith smiled.

   

   

   

   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah i said it was a doozy
> 
> i would also like to say: every comment keeps me going, and i know i would not have finished this monstrosity without all of your thoughts and your encouragement. thank you.
> 
> up next: adam goes home.


End file.
